DeTomaso Mailing List: November 2000, Message #660

I'm not having nearly the problems with my car as Kirby is having right now with his GT5-S, but the simple job of swapping the stock A/C compressor for a rotary one is turning out to be more difficult than planned. 

When installing the compressor, the compressor pulley and drive pulley on the motor are not exactly in plane with each other, they are actually maybe a half inch or so out of plane with maximum adjustment. My hunch is that the stock compressor was the same, and the side loading is what caused the bearings to self destruct in the first place... So to prevent this from happening again, a little fabrication will have to be done on the adapter (it can't be slotted because the hole is already right up against the bend...)

With the compressor installed in the only orientation that allows clearance with non-movable items such as the motor, the A/C lines are too short to reach! By all of a whole inch and a half maybe, but too short is too short. So I either remove all the slack from the nicely routed lines or fab up some new lines. Unless new lines are prohibitively expensive, I'll probably go that route since it looks cheesy cutting corners with the lines in the engine bay... 

Of course the bearing in the adjustment pulley is shot, I'm trying to find one in Spain, but the killer is the A/C filter/dryer. The one that came with this one (sourced from Hall but bought in Europe unused) had only a connection for the a/c lines coming in and going out. On my car, there is also a switch to trigger the condenser fan. No such animal on the new filter, if putting on a new compressor I really ought to replace the 15-year old filter, right? 

How is the fan controlled on earlier cars? I guess the filters are not compatible between early and late cars. Hall is sending me a new filter for the later cars...  But at every step of installing what is widely advertised as a true "plug-and-play" upgrade, something doesn't fit as it should. 

The charm.... That's what I get for trying to fix the A/C on a car when the ambient temp is 5C....

Charlie McCall
1972 DeTomaso Pantera #3847 (for sale)
1985 DeTomaso Pantera GT5-S #9375
"Raising Pantera Awareness across Europe"
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/gt5s_1985