Ramblings, By: Roger Hanes (probably the 6th Edition)

Jazz got Air Conditioning

November 2007

Let’s see, I think I left off last time with rambling on about my investments in Jazz’s new headliner, her new tires, why she needed new tires, and my new appreciation for auto body work. What I didn’t mention last time is the fact that my girl Jazz now has new air conditioning… No, I don’t mean in the garage, I mean Jazz is now air conditioned. Little Cindy can now ride in proper creature comfort. And… because of Jazz’s new bullet mirrors, Cindy can help drive even better… she can see objects disappearing in the rear view mirror. Since there was no way of finding a matching mirror… for the passenger side… (I don’t think they ever made one), I listed and sold on ebay Jazz’s original mirror, (put on at the dealership when she was new). I had a heck of a time getting the old mirror off. Someone had no intention of it ever falling off the car. Anyway, the new bullet mirrors are mounted on the bonnet, about an inch outside the bead, and forward, about eight inches off the aft edge of the bonnet. Jazz hasn’t said, but I think they look cool, and it gives Cindy a warm fuzzy feeling… having her own mirror and all. Anyway, back to the trials and tribulations of air conditioning a thirty eight year old Jaguar. When Jazz was delivered to me back in the spring of ’04, a lot of parts had come up missing… parts that never made it back into the car after crappy repairs… by one dodo or another… in one state or another… over the last thirty odd years. To give you an idea of the items lost… not including the items no longer working… here we go… this will take awhile: In the engine compartment, she was missing the York air conditioning compressor, complete with the whole damn bracket, the dryer…and everything else. The only parts left were the hot wire from the A/C switch, and I guess they just could not loose the condenser coil… I guess that it was just too much trouble to remove with the bonnet in place. Also

missing was the radiator blind cap and both of the two splash panels from under the car. In the boot, the only thing left was the spare tire hold down bolt… the spare wheel and tire as well as the jack… gone… absent… of no need… just gone. Lest I digress, back to the air conditioning in Jazz. For some inexplicable reason, they failed to loose the evaporator coil… you know… it is the big part inside the car with the switches… and vents… yea… that thing. Anyway, while I had the dashboard out of the car, (see Jaguar Ramblings probably from last year sometime), I also removed the evaporator coil so Larry West and I could unscrew the cut off A/C hose stubs from it. They were so stuck, that Larry had to touch the fittings with his acetylene torch in order for us to unscrew the fittings. Anyway, just for good measure, I ran a test on the blower motor to see if it still worked… and guess what… oh, it was there alright, but the motor being some thirty-eight years old, was toast. Oh, and by the way, when I was having Jazz’s radiator rebuilt back in ’04, I had the presence of mind to have the old condenser coil tested as well… that was good money invested. Now where do you get a replacementmotor for an air conditioner put into an English car… some thirty-eight years ago… why… W W Grainger, of course. Maximum expenditure… $12 US.

Success… priceless.

Oh yeah, where was I going with this. That’s right, I was writing about Jazz’s new air conditioning. So, at breakfast one morning, the subject of A/C came up, and Nick Hand from Tahlequah tells me that he has a new R134a compressor in his yellow sedan, and that it not only looks good, it feels good too. Well, you know how it is. When two guys driving Jaguar show up in the same place, everybody raises their bonnet and everyone takes a peek. It’s always been that way… we can’t help it. Anyway, Nick’s installation looks terribly professional… I get the distributor’s name and I proceed to order the new compressor, the handy dandy XKE transition bracket, and the dryer.

That was two years ago… more or less. Anyway, because some previous dummy had removed and thrown away the original compressor and bracket… the new handy dandy XKE transition bracket… has nothing to transition to. There I did it again, I ended a sentence in a preposition. Enough of that. Of course, Jazz is pretty much dismantled in the garage, but I get lucky, and Scott Young makes a stab at welding more tabs and parts onto the handy dandy so that it might actually bolt up to the engine, but that the new compressor might actually line up with the proper drive pulley. Now… don’t get me wrong, or anything. It wasn’t just one stab Scott had to take at that job… it was several before it actually fit… all made the more difficult by the fact that the car is actually dismantled… somewhere else. I’m surprised Scott and Linda even answer the

phone anymore when I call. Anyway, I had hoped to get the shop over off 48 th between Memorial and Sheridan to hook up the A/C, but they only want to work on hot rods and classics during the winter, but I don’t need much A/C in the winter… but now I’m getting to an age where I really appreciate the creature comforts. One of my old boy scouts, Shane Crews, is a licensed heat and air guy for residential dwellings and commercial buildings, so I ask Shane if he thought he could get Jazz’s A/C to running. He comes over, takes a look, borrows the one thing I did get with the car… a repair manual, and goes home to

study it. When next I see Shane, he says he can do this job. I give him some seed money to buy fittings, hoses, etc… Then we determine that having someone else make the A/C hoses just isn’t gonna be in Jazz’s best interest, so I order a portable hose building kit off the internet. A couple of days after it comes in, Shane is over… making the new hoses… routing them through the frame… and connecting the dryer, the new compressor, the old condenser coil, and the old evaporator coil… all together. What does he do

next, he pulls a vacuum on the system… for over an hour… no leaks! Cool! Next, he starts charging the system with R134a. After two more trips to the parts store for more refrigerant, the system is working. Using Shane’s magic, digital thermometer, we have air coming out of the register at 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that’s really cool! Me and Jazz, we’re really getting uptown! Additional investment in A/C from start to finish… probably about $700 US… investment in man hours by multiple people… Scott, Shane and me… probably something like $400… end result… priceless! But take my word for it… there will be a downside… there is always a downside.