Well its finally all sorted and working. We tested the system and got 3°c out of the vents on AC mode so its all good. Some pics of the engine bay work including the heater pipe routing, some under the dash of the evaporate unit, the routing of the heater lines interally, and finally a picture of the back of the control panel below the factory radio speaker.

The more important thing for me at the moment is the heater! A couple of 6° mornings lately makes the heater very nice to have!!

The air con is going to be hooked up this coming week (hopefully) and so its time to clean up the installation before the pipes are all fitted. Some of the parts used in the compressor installation were second hand, some were fabricated from scratch, and some dirty parts were cleaned up along the way. The steel brackets that were made and the bolts that were cleaned up on the wire wheel were starting to rust and so it's time to pull it apart and finish the job so that it works well and also looks good to boot!

Pretty straight forward work really, just involved removing all of the brackets/mounts (who decided to bolt the rear compressor bracket so close to the oil filter so it can't be reached - doh!), sandblasted them to bare metal, degreased them and then painted them in some gloss black VHT paint.

Next step - install dash vents and sort out control panel facia. I ended up going with just matt black as I couldn't get satin and the bright chrome style aluminium paint I bought looked crap. The matt finish with the chrome knob should look okay hopefully. I can always change it later if necessary. The vents are now mounted, ended up mounting the side ones on the kickpanels rather than the dash as the dash at the very ends is no longer straight - it curves up slightly for the last 100mm or so I would not have been able to mount them the way that I would have liked.

Update: The control panel facia is now mounted in the dash. See pics below.

Next step - mounting the in-dash controls. The standard location in the dash is perfectly fine with my setup, but its just a matter of mounting my new air con controls into the existing dash/heater facia/panel. Sounds easy, but turned out to be a bit more difficult than planned. Creating the hole in the facia was relatively easy but for a good looking job I really had to seal up what was left of the factory holes in the heater panel. After snapping off the rear mounts of the black panel in the picture below I went again at the new panel with a bit more knowledge and skill the second time around.

I managed to sort out the holes with a powder and glue substance that I've got. Its similar to bog but uses metal powder combined with some sort of super glue. You just fill the area with the powder and then wet the powder with the supplied liquid glue. Once applied, its rock hard and can be filed or sanded etc. On this one I just sanded it to buggery to make for a smooth front surface of the facia ready to mount the controls into. Its all ready to go now, just gotta paint it. The first one I made and stuffed up was gloss black which really didn't look too good, so I'm going to try and go for the factory look of semi gloss or satin black on the main facia and then a gloss silver paint around the edge. If it doesn't work I'll just go satin or semi gloss black for the whole thing. A bit of trial and error I guess...

Next step - mounting the evaporator unit under the dash. Probably the most tricky part as there is a fair bit to take into account when deciding on the mounting holes - mainly the actual vent tubes and the AC/Heater pipes that will ultimately be connecting to the unit.

The unit itself has two factory mounting points on the rear of the unit, two on the front, and one on the top toward the back. I wanted to drill as few holes as possible in the car and also due to the design of the car I was unable to put brackets/straps directly from the mounting points to the firewall (in-line). The result was to hook the two rear mounting points on the unit to a central mounting point that was roughly in the centre (see pics). A fair bit of messing around but the finished product works well, results in only one firewall hole, and the bolt/nuts are easily accessible once the glovebox is removed.

The next step was to mess around with the front mounting brackets and try to get them to secure mount to the dash. Same issue here, I really didn't want to go drill holes unless absolutely necessary. Maybe I'm being a bit anal with my drilling etc, but every modification I do to the car I try to make it so that it can be undone where at all possible (mind you, that is a bit hard with a new LPG system and a new AC system). I first went about bending up some 2mm flat bar that would then hook up over the dash lip and support the unit by bolting up on the unit side, but on the dash side it was just a 90° bend that would then support the unit.

I soon realised that with any sort of movement of the unit the front part of the bracket (the 'hook') would slide around a bit and make noise. The only way to really go about it and make a secure installation was to mount both ends of the bracket. I went back to 1mm flat bar as its heaps easier to work with and made up two brackets to mount the front of the unit. Its pretty secure now and also leaves enough room for the pipes and so on. Job done!

Its not a good sign when I have to start thinking about roman numerals. I didn't really think that the Air Con upgrade to my val would be a long and tedious task but it has been. Also I've been slack, and so combined the outcome isn't so good. Its been a while since this update and the one before mainly because doing the AC hasn't been a huge priority lately, with the pacer taking away some of my time (have been preparing it for racing) and the weather around here cooling down an awful lot. Summers gone and so the need for AC just isn't there anymore (well, at least for a while). On that note, whilst summer is gone, lately we've had a couple of 6°c mornings which makes the windscreen fog up badly and not to mention it can be a bit nippy in the car. No doubt it will get worse, and so its time to start work on the AC upgrade again.

A next step was surprisingly difficult. To be honest I thought it would be the easiest thing to do in the entire conversion - hooking up the compressor to the harmonic balancer. I measured up the belt distance required with a bit of string and was surprised when the belt I purchased was around 70-80mm too short. Turns out drive belts are measured on their external diameter rather than their internal. So after changing belts 3 or 4 times trying to get one to fit I came to a unfortunate conclusion - 13A1350 was too small and 13A1365 was too large, and there is nothing manufactured inbetween these sizes! So after annoying my local auto shop from changing belts too often I ended up adjusting the compressor installation so that the rear bracket bolted on around 15-20mm lower than before. Any luck? No. The 1350mm belt now was too long!!

I went back to the shop, all they had was a 1345 and a 1335, I opted for the 1335 as I though the play in the 1350 belt would be more than 5mm but I was wrong, I couldn't get the 1335 over the compressor at all let along the idler pulley, so after changing belts again, I settled on a 1345 belt. Its really a small tedious thing really, 5mm here, 5mm there, but I guess it comes down to that my idler pulley does not tension the belt in the way it originally did on the factory power steering setup. Rather than taking up a fair amount of slack in the belt by adjusting the idler pully on a factory power steering setup, on my setup where the AC compressor is located the idler pulley only has the ability to take up a little bit of slack just due to the angles of the belts and the arrangement of the pulley. Oh well, this drama is now over. When I started I didn't think I'd be so excited that the belt fit, but after 5 or 6 belts and heaps of minor burns on my arms from trial and error on a hot radiator the AC compressor install is done and done.

I have now installed the condensor in front of the radiator. It pretty much takes up all of the hole in the radiator support panel, restricting a lot of air from reaching the radiator. I decided to test the cooling system with the new condensor installed (cold). I drove for about an hour at 100km/h on at 35° day and the car was overheating. Not good.

After tossing up over a few modern radiator options I bit the bullet and just got the 2 core radiator changed to a 3 core.  The 2 core still had the Chrysler badge/plate on it which meant that the 2 core in the car was the original 35 year old system. When picking up the new 3 core job I examined the old 2 core at the radiator shop. Lets just say that 35 years of use had taken its toll!! The old radiator was absolutely full of crap and a little corroded. About 30-40% of the cores were blocked, so the 3 core should really fix things up.

As seen in the pics, I purchased a radiator filter for the engine that will stop the engine crud getting into the new 3 core, hopefully extending its life somewhat. I have driven the car around now with some fresh coolant and the new system and it seems okay. Haven't had a hot day (over 35° c) yet though to really test it out.

Next part was to mount the drier. I spoke to the AC guy that will be installing my hoses and he recommended to mount it somewhere in air flow, but he has worked on a few custom air con jobs on these cars that have had them mounted to the passenger inner fender. In the air flow is better, but not essential.

The next step is to really start looking at the install of the evaporator unit inside the car. The AC guy lent me a 90° connector so that I can do some accurate measurements and determine where the best place for the hoses to go through the firewall is. What you see in the picture is a polished aluminium bulkhead adaptor from Vintage Air. 2 connections for heater hose, 1 for AC gas (coming out), and one for AC liquid (going in). I was going to have the hoses going through the passenger side firewall, and to keep everything AC related on the passenger side of the engine bay / cabin but this may not be possible now.

The lines would have to go through the firewall, do an immediate 90° bend, travel approx 150mm and then do a 180° bend. The biggest issue is having the bulk head adapter and 90° bends (as seen in pic) managing to fit in there with the evaporator unit. The gap between the evaporator unit and the glovebox etc is pretty tight as is, and I definently want to keep my glovebox. Will see how I go...

Time for the next step - installing the engine bay components. I figured that the compressor would probably be the hardest job so I decided to tackle that one first. Using the gear from the last post (factory power steering setup and compressor parts off early commodore) I started to do a test fit. First thing to notice is that the fuel line/filter was sitting exactly where the compressor had to go. Time to gentle maneuver the line out of the way temporarily so that I could mount the compressor and move the fuel line back as far as possible later.

Holding the top of the compressor up against the power steering bracket was a good sign, as the pulleys nearly lined up without any messing around. It was looking too good to be true!! I could just drill a hole in the bracket and run a 3/8" bolt through the commodore bracket on the compressor and have that part as the pivot. I drilled a hole in the bracket and bolted it all up. First problem - the commodore bracket was bending when I tightened up the 9/16" nut on the 3/8" bolt. So I made up a spacer to stop any movement of this kind.

Next problem, despite the compressor bolting up flush to the power steering bracket, the angle of the compressor was wrong - the rear of the compressor was further to the passenger side of the car than the front of the compressor. It turns out that the commodore bracket, whilst it looks symmetrical it is not, and the holes for the 3/8" bolt were about 3mm out from being straight in-line. More messing around, a 4mm spacer, and the top of the compressor was looking good. Time for the rear mount.

The factory setups on these cars had the rear mount of the AC compressor bolting to a hole on the engine mount, but it seemed a little out of the way and would make doing the oil filter a bit of a pain in the ass. I ended up bolting the rear bracket to a 7/16" bolt that goes down just to the left of the oil filter (a bolt that holds the oil filter bracket on). Its almost directly under the centre of the AC compressor and so made for a perfect fitment when bolting up the compressor. I used a 25mm x 3mm angle bracket for extra strength (to avoid warping). After a lot of messing around, including cutting chunks out of the bracket to avoid the oil filter, it was ready to go. Had to temporarily remove the oil filter for the install as the bolt is hard to get to - so maybe in hindsight this wasn't the best spot!! But now that its all installed it looks good and is hard to see rather than a large bracket going over and around the oil filter to the engine mount bracket. After re-doing the petrol lines to the carby she was all good again!!

I haven't measured up the required belt length but will do this shortly and buy one. Next step is trying to find a spot to vertically mount the drier and to also mount the condenser. Looks to be pretty straight forward but we'll see!!

Next fun filled challenge was to start trying to fit the AC gear to my VE and Slant 6. I asked around on the Mopar Market Forum for advice and pictures of similar setups and thankfully did get some help. The problem is that the only model that had air conditioning on a Slant 6 motor was the VF Valiant - and that most all of the VF Valiants that had aircon (few in numbers) had V8s as part of the VF VIP model/package. This meant that even if I could find a VF with AC it would probably be a V8 and the brackets wouldn't suit my Slant 6 anyway (the VF VIP mentioned below was a V8). The best option that I had read about so far was to mount the compressor very low down on the passenger side of the engine and run a second belt off a second pulley bolted to the original Slant 6 pulley (harmonic balancer) (see pic). The problem with this is that it requires the oil filter to be relocated to the other side of the engine (where the pump is), which is a fair bit of pissing around.

I managed to score a factory powersteering setup off a VF Regal Hardtop that had a Slant 6 in it. The setup works similar to a factory AC setup in that the power steering pump is in the general area of where the AC compressor would mount. This meant that an idler pulley has to be used and a special water pump (fan) pulley also has to be used. From what I can gather these double-groove water pump pulleys are pretty rare and now I know why.

Now that the engine side of the arrangement is sorted (almost) the next thing to work out brackets for is the compressor itself. I can't just buy brackets off the shelf because these new rotary compressors weren't around in the era that my car was made and so I've had to get parts off other cars. I managed to pick up a AC bracket to suit my Sanden compressor off a VB/VC/VK commodore a pick-a-part yard today( see pic) which was surprisingly straight forward - I didn't have to go hunting for very long at all to find what I was after.

I plan to start bolt up this setup this weekend and will put updates on how I go...

The next bit is to choose the gear I wanted for inside the car. There were a few options to choose from. First up I went to wreck a system out of a VF VIP with factory air but on seeing the size of the system and the work involved to get it back in order I opted against it, and rather, going for new gear where possible. Jayair offer a budget style evaporator system that is a whole unit sitting in one box (with vents attached) that sits on the transmission hump/dash. A company called Vintage Air in the USA are very popular with Hot Rodders and the do a range of generic systems to suit many different cars. They appear to be a higher quality than the rest (more $$ too mind you), and so I went with them.

Below you can see the concealed under dash unit (Gen II Compac) that I ensured would fit. They have dimensions of all of their units on their website and so I crawled under the dash of the VE and measured it all up. I will have to remove the passenger side plenum vent box but nothing else should be a problem - one big thing here is the glovebox - I wanted to keep it and thankfully I can.

As part of the "package" they offer, you get a unit and a choice of vent styles and knob styles. I opted to get two of the 'eye-ball' style vents for each side of the car/dash and one dual vent for the centre of the car/dash. The standard Gen II Compac kit comes with 3 vents and so I had to pay extra for the 4th. Next is the knobs - the standard ones look pretty bad if you ask me and so I went for the 'period style' knobs you can see there. They are a very highly polished aluminium which should hopefully blend in well with the chrome in the VE.

I went over the package when I received it and the whole thing seems ultra high quality. The unit itself is a CAD designed unit aimed at maximum flow, and over the Jayair option above this one also has heater and demister/defrost modes as well.

Time to get on to the 3rd part of my VE project - air con. The other two (LPG and disc brakes) are sorted out now so its 'just' the air con. I'm a sucker for leaving the hardest job till last!

After a lot of research on the subject and figuring out what I need to do and buy to fit AC to my VE I found a company here in Perth that sell/distribute everything from a company called Jayair. Jayair have a huge range of automotive AC parts, no matter what you're after they probably have it.

So the first step was to take some measurements so I can determine what I need to buy. First up for the engine bay the required gear is a condensor (sits in front of radiator), a drier (the cylinder) and the compresser. After speaking to some knowledgeable people I went on and bought the gear seen in the pictures below. My shopping list for today was a Sanden 7863 Compressor, a 500mm x 420mm condensor and a generic drier.

Next step... figure out what sort of system I want inside the car!

Its all done and done now. Got all of the disc brake setup bolted on and started fitting the remote booster. I had to make a custom bracket for where it goes to the firewall as the booster I have is slightly different to the original booster in the valiants, but apart from that the only thing needed was to make a few new lines.

I had a bit of a brake problem before I took the car off the road for the disc brake conversion and so after thinking about it for a while I decided it best to replace the master cylinder whilst I'm at it. Not a cheap exercise but the MC was most likely the problem behind a soft pedal when I had drums all round. At least this way I know that almost everything brake related has been replaced or reconditioned.

Now that my new lower control arms have a sway bar mounting its time to mount my sway bar. Its a standard sway bar off my VH valiant wagon parts car at this stage, hopefully down the track I will do some swapping between the VE and the Pacer and fit a larger (new) bar to the Pacer. I'm glad I had the Pacer nearby to compare measurements to! I thought it would be an easy bolt up exercise but even getting the bolt spacing spot on was a challenge. A few hours later though and a few white-out spots on the k-frame and it was installed.

A wheel alignment is booked in for next week. I will report back then :)

The rims on the car looked a little worse for wear and so whilst the car is in pieces I thought it was time to clean up the rims as well. Some fresh paint and some whitewalls will really set the car off I reckon. I paid my local tyre man to remove the tyres from the rims, gave the rims and sandblast and they were then sprayed in 2 Pack. I bought a litre of 2 pack mixed up to be "Alpine White" (same as the car) but was not impressed when I compared the rims to the car - the colour difference is substantial. The rims are much whiter than the car is, and even though the car paint may not be original I'm sure its closer to original than the rims! It does not matter though, white will do (although I would have preferred body colour!!).

I have re-assembled the disc brake stub axles, rotor and calipers. New bearings and seals in the rotors, and the calipers were fully reconditioned about a month and a half ago - cleaned, separated, sand blasted with new seals, springs and washers installed. I have new flexible lines that I will install when I am ready to hook up the calipers. Currently waiting on a left hand ball joint, the ones that I have been supplied (twice now) have been incorrect. It seems that the early VE disc brake models have 9/16" bolts for the lower ball joint whereas every other model valiant regardless of brake setup has 1/2" bolts. Fun fun...

After giving the diff another degrease and wash to try and get more of the crap off I started on the small weep. If you stare at the spot long enough you can actually make out a very small crack (1.5mm long) at the point. I attacked this area with some extra degreaser and some muscle to ensure everything foreign was removed from the surface. I used a metal die grinder bit in a drill to take off 0.5-1mm off the surface around the problem to give a clean metal surface that my repair can stick to. I've got this kit that has some powder and some sort of glue that allows you to fix up holes and repair thing that normal glue can't. It allows you to actually replace parts that have broken off, and its really hard so you can drill it/cut it etc. Anyway I used some of this stuff and it worked a treat. If I can remember the name I'll put it here.

A while later after cleaning the bugger and fixing the leak I decided that it would only need a little bit more work to paint it rather than put it back in looking not so good. So I attacked it with a metal brush and some paint quality degreaser a couple of times to get every loose particle off and to help the paint stick. Used some Gloss Black VHT engine enamel paint and it came up pretty well - with no reactions despite the diff wasn't thoroughly cleaned or sandblasted.

I sandblasted the other diff/spring bits such as the hangers and painted them with some POR 15. Two coats and they were looking pretty good. As you can see I had a bit of a washing line happening with all the parts lined up. My towball tongue and towball also snuck in to get a sandblast and a quick paint as it looked pretty bad/rusty.

May as well do everything whilst the car is apart hey! The leaf springs were seriously sagging and the rear needs to be raised about 2 inches. I've now got 70 kilo's of extra weight over the rear from the LPG conversion, so an extra spring is also needed. It was pretty straight forward to remove the diff, the biggest pain was the hand brake - I started to remove one end from the drum but that turned out to be a waste of time, as I couldn't get the inner drum part of the hand brake out of the drum without breaking the seal between the in and outside of the drum. Half the time of the overall removal was the disassembly and assembly of the drum! Ended up backing off the adjusting point on the body and left the cables on the diff.

A lot of cleaning / scraping / degreasing and the diff is looking OK. I can almost see some paint on there. Once the 30+ years of grease, dirt and grime was removed I could see a Chrysler sticker that had the part number on it! Just goes to show, sometimes these cars have had a lot of use but are also very original and unrestored. I've  now removed the springs and will take them to the shop soon. Next part is fixing a small weep on the crown of the diff. Stay tuned...

Time to tackle the next part of my plans for the VE - an upgrade from 4 wheel drum brakes to disc brakes on the front. The car was parked, put on stands and then it was time to get greasy. All went well with no major problems, here are some pictures of my progress. The final result is my new POR-15 painted lower control arm installed that has the extra tab that allows for a sway bar to be fitted.

Yesterday arvo I picked up the car from the LPG shop. I went for a duel fuel conversion using a 85L (69L useable) tank in the boot. The conversion took 3 solid days (dropped off Tuesday night, picked up Friday night) but now I'm laughing. I filled up the beast 20 minutes after leaving the shop and a full tank cost a measly $37!

The car runs pretty good on LPG too and starts better than before, but it has lost a bit of performance all round I reckon. The overall feeling is that the car is a bit more doughy than before... but that isn't too much of a concern for a daily cruiser with a budget conversion. I am using the standard 2bbl carter carb with a gas ring sitting above the carb between the carb and the air cleaner. See pics below.