True Connections

For those Chevelle and El Camino owners without factory air conditioning, there is a great new way to beat the heat this coming summer. Vintage Air offers complete air conditioning kits that hide under the dash of your 1964-1972 Chevelle and El Camino. These kits include everything you need for a temperature controlled environment, heating, cooling, and defrost. Vintage Air customizes their kits to match each application, with many options available. Whether you’ve got a small or big block, headers or manifolds, factory air car or not, Vintage Air will make sure you get the right kit for your car. If you’re trying to retain that factory look the kits utilize the factory temperature controller whenever possible, and you can always run the ducts through factory dash vents or even run the stock style compressor, assuming you can find the brackets. The Vintage Air kits come with the small Sanden style compressor and you can even order it polished if you’re partial to the shiny stuff. We contacted Joel Hoffman at JH Restorations in Riverside, Ca. to learn the ins and outs involved in a Vintage Air kit installation. Joel has installed too many Vintage Air kits to count, on everything imaginable, from 67 Chevelles to 39 Plymouth roadsters. After speaking at length with Joel we decided this is not something the average car guy can tackle on his own. Many Chevelle and El Camino owners will be able to follow Vintage Air’s detailed instruction booklet in the mounting of the compressor, condenser, or even the inside box, but since special tools and equipment are required for building the lines and charging the system, we definitely recommend a qualified technician perform the installation. However Joel did offer a couple of pointers. For instance, the kit comes with boxes that block off the holes on your firewall and allow the hoses to pass through. Although this works fine, it leaves something to be desired in the way of a sanitary look, so Joel recommends shaving and filling the firewall smooth, and then hiding the lines under the fender by using a special bulkhead available through Vintage Air. Then you can run the lines to the condenser and compressor between the fender and inner fender where no one can see them. Another interesting item is that Vintage Air does not offer a kit for 1970-1972 Chevelles and El Caminos because the temperature controller is almost totally run off of vacuum, where a Vintage Air kit uses cables to control the settings. Joel has found a way around this problem by using the 1968-1969 Chevelle kit, since 1968-1972 firewalls are basically the same, and adapting a controller available through Vintage Air. After all is said and done, Joel invited us to test a system already installed. It was about 80 degrees outside, the car was idling, and a 30” fan blowing on the front to keep from overheating. We popped a thermometer into the vent and it soon read 35 degrees, enough to freeze out the hardiest of souls. Next month we’re going to dive into the 1965 Z-16.