Cars with busted ac

[meep]

Originally Posted By: BAJA_05
The older I get, the more I enjoy the AC in the car. When I was younger -- windows were down most of the time in the summer.


agreed. never really used it until about 2010. preferred windows down. I'd take the button-down off (always an undershirt) for the drives home and always had water on-hand. it gets hot and humid here but I work in an air conditioned box all day.

Now it's a little different. Either it's my age or it's getting hotter (both?). Mostly, though, it's the wind and road noise starting to get to me - I need the quiet more often, so the A/C gets more use.

-m

 

[exranger06]

I cannot live without AC in the car. I used to deliver parts for Napa. Most of the delivery vehicles did not have working AC. I would drive those all day long in the summer heat, and it sucked, to say the least. I would sometimes drive the Dodge Caravan with both sliding doors wide open for more airflow

. I got some interesting looks on the highway. If the AC in any of my cars breaks, I'm fixing it. My CR-V has a bad compressor right now and I haven't had the time or money to fix it yet, so it's been sitting. Luckily I have other vehicles to drive in the meantime. I sometimes wonder if people notice me driving my old Accord with all of the windows rolled all the way up in really hot weather...that's right, the AC still works! It needed its first ever AC service 7 years ago, when it was 19 years old. I converted it to R134a and it's back to being ice cold ever since.

 

[07titan]

Many great inventions, AC is certainly one of them.

 

[Anduril]

Originally Posted By: skyactiv
What does an electric bill cost right now in California?

$50-$60 running as much A/C as we want. Funny thing about solar is it works best when it's hottest and you use the most electricity otherwise.

 

[KrisZ]

Originally Posted By: Anduril
Originally Posted By: skyactiv
What does an electric bill cost right now in California?

$50-$60 running as much A/C as we want. Funny thing about solar is it works best when it's hottest and you use the most electricity otherwise.


Are you on net metering or does your system have two meters?

$50-$60 sounds like you bought the panels, because a lease is usually about $100. So a $20k-$30k investment before incentives, not to mention the much higher rate the electric company has to buy the electricity from you.

The joke is on the tax payers.

 

[SeaJay]

Many American made cars in the 1970's thru mid-1980's came with A/C as an option.

Here in the northeast, the A/C did fine when the outside temps were not that bad. But when used in very hot (90 or more) and humid conditions, they usually either started blowing warm air, or overheated the engine's cooling system. The cars did this even when practically new, somewhat useless A/C systems actually.

 

[Olas]

Weight and parasitic drag are the only ins AC brings to the table.
Dropped windows do just as good or even better is an evaporative cooler, 50s style.

Ditch the AC and all it's accessories/ancillaries for more power and better mpg - any accessory that costs to install, slows the car down and makes it cost more to run is stupid.

 

[Anduril]

Originally Posted By: Olas
Weight and parasitic drag are the only ins AC brings to the table.
Dropped windows do just as good or even better is an evaporative cooler, 50s style.

Ditch the AC and all it's accessories/ancillaries for more power and better mpg - any accessory that costs to install, slows the car down and makes it cost more to run is stupid.

Say that when it's 110 out

 

[zorobabel]

You have it pretty easy - temperature wise.
Originally Posted By: Olas
Weight and parasitic drag are the only ins AC brings to the table.
Dropped windows do just as good or even better is an evaporative cooler, 50s style.

Ditch the AC and all it's accessories/ancillaries for more power and better mpg - any accessory that costs to install, slows the car down and makes it cost more to run is stupid.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: Anduril
Originally Posted By: Olas
Weight and parasitic drag are the only ins AC brings to the table.
Dropped windows do just as good or even better is an evaporative cooler, 50s style.

Ditch the AC and all it's accessories/ancillaries for more power and better mpg - any accessory that costs to install, slows the car down and makes it cost more to run is stupid.

Say that when it's 110 out.


Or 90 with 85% humidity.

 

[Olas]

The humans ability to thermoregulate is partly attributable to their surface area : mass ratio.

 

[Tahoe4Life]

Originally Posted By: SeaJay
Many American made cars in the 1970's thru mid-1980's came with A/C as an option.

Here in the northeast, the A/C did fine when the outside temps were not that bad. But when used in very hot (90 or more) and humid conditions, they usually either started blowing warm air, or overheated the engine's cooling system. The cars did this even when practically new, somewhat useless A/C systems actually.


My first vehicle was a used 1967 Impala with factory air. The a/c was ice cold and worked well as long as traffic was moving decently but in nasty gridlock had to shut it off as the engine would heat up. In my 1970 GTO,77 Caprice,79 Caddy,the a/c all worked well and were better in traffic but sometimes I cut if off if I was in gridlock.

The 70 GTO and 77 Caprice did the best in traffic and I barely ever cut the a/c off in gridlock on those.

By 1988 all was well with the a/c as I could run my 88 Lincoln Town in hours of traffic and there was no need to shut off the a/c. Now [as I travel a lot] I see vehicles sitting in rest areas running for hours on end with the owners sound asleep in their vehicles. By the river of water dripping out on the ground from their a/c and frosty windows you know they have been sitting there a very long time.

If vehicles in Miami did not have a/c [where summer is 12 months a year and traffic is a total nightmare] a lot more people would be having road rage. It happens very often in Miami.

The V8 engine did a lot better in gridlock with the a/c on from the late 60's to the mid 80's. The 4 and 6 bangers constantly heated up with the a/c on even at traffic lights.

 

[Dave Sherman]

Originally Posted By: SeaJay
Many American made cars in the 1970's thru mid-1980's came with A/C as an option.



A handful of vehicles still had A/C optional even into the 2000s. I know a girl who bought a 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt in the uber-basic XFE trim. She bought it in the fall. Come spring, she found out the hard way that she couldn't turn the air conditioning on because it wasn't equipped with it. I didn't believe it myself until I found out it was optional in that trim level.

 

[Malo83]

My 83 Silverado came with AC when i bought it new, still running R12 which really blows COLD. Had the whole system rebuilt 2 yrs ago with new compressor, lines and dryer, condenser is still original, found a shop that bought up all the R12 they could find when it was outlawed.

 

[01rangerxl]

My parents bought a new Ranger in 1986 with no AC. At the time my dad thought trucks should be VERY basic..to the point he had a non-AC truck dealer traded from northern VA to central NC to get what he wanted. Dark grey exterior, burgundy vinyl interior, no AC, no slider..the only heat mitigating option was tinted rear windows. That truck was brutal in the summer, especially since a lot of interior parts were metal. That was the last vehicle they bought without AC.