Removing the air conditioner from your N13
by: Anman
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THIS ARTICLE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
I am adding things as I do it. Last updated 15th of october 2008. So I really am updating it.
Removing the aircon creates space, better flow for your radiator, lightens up your car a little, and takes a little load off of your engine by having one less item to run. Really, the gains are minimal, but it all adds up. The main reason I am doing this to this car, is to make room in the engine bay.
I put this together using a 1990 GX hatch. Australian model.
Now, I want to point out that I have done a bit of research into this. Mainly on how to and about the refrigerant gas, but make sure you read ALL of this FIRST before you start doing these things.
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Before you do anything with your air con system, the first thing you have to do is remove the gas. DO NOT DO ANYTHING WITHOUT REMOVING THE GAS. There are two ways you can do this.
Professionally removed:
This is the safest way to do it. Go to an auto aircon guy, or possibly a regular mechanic and get them to take the gas out. The gas in these older cars is no longer produced, so you may be able to sell it too, so make sure you ask if you do this. If your air con works perfectly and probably has lots of gas, this is the best option. It does however, cost money. But if you can sell it, it shouldn’t be too bad. If your aircon doesn’t work, is too old and you think it ran out of gas a long time ago then the next option is for you.
Remove it yourself:
If you don’t do this properly, or do it too quickly and rush into this, you will hurt yourself. Or if the situation is perfect, remove your street from the map. I really recommend you use the other option if your aircon is fully gassed. If you are not sure you should check the service manual (available at this site somewhere). If this gas leaks onto you, you will get hurt. So if it comes out in any large bursts and you burn your hand, I warned you. More so, DO NOT smoke when doing this, don’t start your car when doing this, do not leave it near a fire. On this note, doing this is also illegal in most places. The EPA say its dangerous for the environment and shit, but for people who say a car cant be loud and a motor bike can, who gives a fat shit? This gas isn’t very polluting at all. In fact, it is normal operation to have it leak out over time. It says in the service manual that its
Open bonnet. Remove your front bar/grill. Locate this bit here:
Image 1
In the white circle bit at the top there, there used to be a bolt. Loosen it very slowly. The moment you hear a rushing sound of air coming out, stop. That’s your compressed air coming out. Let it go for however long it takes until the noise stops. Wait a bit for the gas to clear, in case there isn’t much wind. Start your car for about 30 seconds with the air con on. That will get rid of any pockets that may be left over.
Removing the dryer
Once gas is gone it’s good to start here. Disconnect battery. Take your radiator overflow bottle out completely. Also helps to remove battery. I was too lasy to do it at the time so the pictures have it in there. You WILL need to take it out later anyway.
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Disconnect the white plug attached to the black cylinder thing running down the side of the bay. Undo the nuts attached to it. Unscrew the one screw attached to the bay.
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Shove something lengthy and strong between the dryer and the car. Lever it about until you can pull the metal pipes out of it. Start with the one facing towards the chassis. Then pull the other one out. There is then a screw at the top of the picture that holds the dryer in that little cradle of its. Take it out. Then the dryer should just fall out.
Image 4
There is then one screw at the bottom of the cradle, unscrew and the cradle should then come out.
Removing hoses
There are two ways to do this part. The first way, is to carefully undo everything and then pull the pipes out. This will not damage anything incase you want to keep it or possibly sell it. Which I doubt you will be able to sell, because these old aircons use the old gas that isnt produced anymore. And I doubt a 20 year old aircon system will be in good condition. Being careful here is a lot more time consuming, but it keeps everything intact.
The other way to do it is to slash and burn. I didn’t want this stuff, so I just bent pipes and cut hoses.
First you will need to disconnect the hoses from the compressor. It helps to do this from under the car. It is on the driver’s side, right at the front of the engine. Look for something that looks like this:
Image 5
Note, you wont see the white and copper colour thing at the top. This thing has a newish custom exhaust. If you’re STILL not sure where or what it is, there will be two hoses that run over the top of your radiator. Follow those towards the driver’s side. It will go to where you need to disconnect them. Seriously, look at that mess. Your engine bay will look much nicer without that crap.
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Undo these two nuts.
Image 5.1
They’re in a bit of an awkward position, but as I said, it’s easier to do from under the car. However, I was unable to undo one of them. I had to put in a make shift breaker bar but even then, with so little room to move I still couldn’t get it undone. So, I looked for my knife, couldn’t find it, so I borrowed some pruning cutter things from the gardening box and just cut.
Image 7
I have already removed the OTHER hose in this image. The one that did come out. If you’re not going to be removing the compressor at the moment, or are just too lasy and will be driving the car, you will need to tie this hose back away from the engine. Unless you can cut it back right at the compressor, then no problem. I was too lasy to try that though, so I just cut it near the top. Follow your newly disconnect hoses. You will come across a lot of joining nuts with metal pipes in them. These usually come out easily, but you WILL find some that don’t. So you do need to do this:
Image 8
Or you will bend the shit out of your pipes. If you’re slashing and burning this isn’t too bad, except if you twist a metal pipe off you might have trouble getting it done when you finally bring in the shifting spanner. Undo all the nuts mentioned above. There is one thing to note here. This pipe here:
Image 9
Do not remove just yet. If you plan on driving the car around without your front bar on, it’s in your best interest to leave that on. You can’t remove the bottom bit, it is attached to the condenser. In case you don’t know, the condenser is the front part of the radiator. You essentially have two radiators. The one in front, is the one you will be removing. However, in order to remove it, you need to take your entire radiator out. So leave that to last and dont remove that metal pipe till last. In Image 9 you can also see a rubber hose poking out the side. You’ll also notice the top metal bit from image 1 is also missing. That top bit, is attached to the rubber hose. I was in the process of pulling the hoses out attached to the compressor, and didn’t undo the metal pipe from the hose, so I just bent the pipe and slide it out the front of the car.
While you were removing the two hoses that go over the radiator, you may have noticed a little plate sticking out above the radiator.
Image 10
When removing this, ensure you pick up the two bolts that are on the opposite side of the nut. I didn’t realise they were there until one dropped out. When I do things to my cars I hate leaving little bolts and nuts and bits inside the engine bay. Who knows what damage it could do. Make sure you fish the two nuts from under the metal bar they came out of. Once those two hoses are gone, we can then remove the other two hoses that go to the fire wall. These ones are a little tricky. First, follow the lines up to the fire wall.
Image 11
You will need to undo these two nuts here so you can pull the pipes out. These are tricky. I did the top one with a spanner easily, but the ones underneath I had to use multigrips. Once that’s done take your battery out if you haven’t already done it. You will then need to take out your wiper washer bottle as well. You CAN just unhook it and push it to the side, without having to disconnect all the wires and hoses.
Image 12
Fish around here for two screws that are attached to the hoses we want to get rid of. Take them out. You can see my washer bottle sitting against the engine there at the top. You then need to loosen the plate that battery was sitting on.
Image 13
I couldn’t find my 12mm sockets so I had to use a spanner. It sucked. Take out bolts top left, top right, and bottom left and just loosen bottom right a bit. You should then be able to pull the two hoses to the left and out from behind the engine mount into open space. Bolt your battery plate back down again. Your hoses should now just come out with a bit of fiddling. Put washer bottle back in. Go to the two little pipes sticking out from the fire wall. Back in image 11. If you don’t plan on going abseiling under your interior dash in order to remove the rest of your aircon system then you should leave this as it is. You can plug up the pipes just in case your paranoid but it wont make a difference really. Unless you really want to keep the system at a later date. Then do plug it up, so it doesn’t get dirty. If you do want to remove it though, you’ll need to take out the rubber grommet there. It’s pretty easy, unscrew the four screws and then just pull it out.
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It has slits in the top and bottom to slide out. It will help to keep this. After you take the metal pipes out from under your dash you can sikaflex, glue, tape, whatever the two holes in the grommet and then put it back in to cover the hole up.
Removing the compressor
This is by far the simplest task out of this whole procedure. Most people seem to think it’s the most complex. I, at one stage thought so too. I really don’t know why. But it’s the easiest.
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It will make things so much easier for you, more so if your car is incredibly low, like mine. You will need to remove all the plastic protective covering. All of it, except the bits that go over the wheel arch. Once its removed it will look a bit like this:
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With that, you have officially taken the bulk of the load off the engine. Not much really. But this next bit is the most important. First, locate a single, usually black wire, attached to the compressor. Not the one attached to the two bolts.
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But one that has no plug and is attached to some wire loom. Just one wire, cut it, wrap it up in a bit of race tape or something, and forget about it. Come in from the front of the car and look for this on your compressor:
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The big bronzish bolt against the engine with the rubber thing in it. There are four of them and they are the mounts to the engine. If you are unsure, you can just unbolt ANYTHING attached to the compressor. Eventually it will fall off. These bolts are a pain to get to, and you will need a spanner on each side to break them. Since they are mounts the bolt/nut will just rotate as you turn it. Once they’ve been broken you can pretty much undo them with your hands. The next step is to actually remove the bracket that is used to mount them to the engine.
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There are three bolts on this thing, top, right and middle. These are straight forward. Break, unscrew, remove giant plate thing. And you're done.
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Last of the basic engine bay things
You will need to completely disable the aircon system. Removing the fuses from under the dash WILL disable them, but it will also disable your heater system too. These two relays here, mine are blue and orange;
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They control the compressor and evaporator systems. Without these, your aircon has no chance. And removing these can make things a little neater. Just unscrew the black bracket that attaches them to the wall, unplug, remove the black braket, screw black box back onto the car without the bracket. You need that, as it keeps your window wipers in check. If you cant unplug the relays you can put a screw driver to the back like so:
And the relays will come out giving you easy access to the clips.
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You can then just tuck the plugs away to the side and no one will know. On that note, don’t try to remove any of the wiring from the loom. It’s too difficult. And the gains are practically 0. But if you are that hardcore on weight, you can do it. Just enjoy unplugging every single wire in your engine, cutting the hell out of your loom, taping it all back together and replacing all the plugs and connectors you broke in the process, only to discover you have to take your entire dash out just to get the wires that lead to your under dash relays and so on.
Removing the condenser
This is the worst part of the operation for the engine bay. In order to get the condenser out, you have to remove your entire radiator. I’m not going through the removal process in too much detail, but enough to get you going. First, you need to unplug any wires attached to your radiator. Start here:
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There will be
About the Author
I love pulsars, at least the older ones. They are technically advanced enough and not so much that they make a great project car. My plans for this car are EXTREME and so far has cost me over AU$20,000 for the work I've done so far.
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