Pretty Cool

Today I went over to Francisco's shop to see how the car was coming along and meet Andy the A/C guy. Although Admir and Frank mentioned splitting one of the A/C ducts and routing it to the back, I wanted to have a more in-depth (and in-person) conversation about my options, so Frank called Andy.

Andy told me that with the single-compressor system I have now, it takes about 4-5 minutes to cool the front of the car and it would take 15-20 to cool the back. His solution was to put another unit in the back, which would fit width-wise across the back of the car, hang down 6 inches, and stick out 12 inches. He would probably take a unit from a Suburban, Tahoe, or Escalade and fit it to my car.

Admir really doesn't want to do this. I wish he could have been around while Andy was explaining all this to me, but he had another job run long and couldn't make it. Admir thinks it's going to require too much power in exchange for very little benefit. Since the weather in Seattle doesn't get particularly hot or cold (just wet), I'm leaning toward splitting a duct.

So on Monday, Admir is going to head over to Francisco's and split one of my car's air ducts and route it to the back so I can see for myself how long it takes for the back of the car to get cold. Since a divider hasn't been made yet (or even invoiced yet, which makes me kind of uneasy), he's going to hang some kind of thick blanket between the two sections of the car as a mock divider.

From what I understand, no matter what I do, I'm going to need 7 pounds of freon to cool the entire car, versus the 3 pounds of freon in the average unit. I was also informed that I should change the type of freon I'm using from R12 to 134A, which is newer, cheaper, and better for the car. The more you know...

The car doesn't look that different from last time. Francisco pulled out the dash so Georgie, the dash-decal guy, could measure the wood-paneled parts to make covers for them. I will probably only deal with him through Francisco, since the finished dash is contingent on his covering the rest of it with the pink vinyl. When I go back on Monday to test Admir's hypothesis, I'll also pick out a shade of black to cover the woody parts.

But right now, it's just wiry and naked:



Full frontal nudity:



In other news, Admir is still researching how best to do the ceiling. He met with someone in Burbank who would put fiber optic lights on top of a board, but instead of covering them with a thin layer of plexiglass, he wanted to use some kind of clear paste. Admir said it looked cheesy and I said that reminded me of the popcorn spray they put on apartment ceilings in lieu of leveling the texture to make them look nice. A guy in Florida is sending us a catalog of home theater lighting options that Admir and I will go through together on Monday, I hope.

My head unit was delivered to Art at Central Auto Sound, so I need to call him and make sure it wasn't lost or stolen.

It's going to be cheap and easy to make armrests for the two rear doors. The door handles themselves will be cheap, but the labor will be expensive. I want to put curtains in the windows, so I'm thinking of foregoing the idea of windows rolling down and just concentrate on doors opening. You can only roll down the rear windows halfway in most cars anyway.

As some hearse enthusiasts know, a few models have suicide doors, where the rear doors open on the opposite side. My car doesn't have suicide doors as you can see from the outside. However, since the two full rear seats face the back instead of the front, the rear doors will open as if they were suicide doors. It's not good or bad, I was just thinking about it...

Here's an example of a car with suicide doors from outside the Viva Car Show in Las Vegas earlier this month: