With the painting completed it is time to st art putting pieces on this car. I st art by mounting the windshield wiper motor and the Hot Rod Air heating and air conditioning unit. Be sure to note that I also routed the defroster duct work, the condensation drain hose for the Hot Rod Air unit and the bulkhead plate that transitions the air conditioning hoses from the engine comp art ment to the interior comp art ment.  

The refrigerant hoses that come with the Hot Rod Air kit are in bulk length and therefore must be cut to fit and the connector ends crimped on. This is not a do-it-yourself project so the first thing I did was to install the connector ends to the unit mounted under the dash, the bulkhead plate, the dryer, the compressor, and the condenser. Next I measured for the hose lengths needed to join all of the components and cut the hoses to length. Once that was done I delivered the hoses, there are six of them, to my local automotive air conditioner specialist an d h ad the connectors crimped to the hoses.

Notice that I marked the position of the connector ends on each hose before sending them out for crimping. I use a length of masking tape to mark each hose. This insures the connector is facing the right direction and that the hose does not have to be twisted to make the connection. Twisting can reduce the life of the hose.

Hose installation is a matter of installing the O-rings provided in the kit onto each of the connectors and assembling the pieces. What I won’t do at this time is evacuate the system and add a charge of R134A refrigerant. I’ll save that until I have the car running.

Inside the car I have a couple of cosmetic considerations to think about when it comes to delivering that crisp, cold air to the occupants. First is where to locate the controls. The control panel that comes with the kit is designed to be mounted underneath the dash. I elected to modify the control panel and incorporate it into the dash. That will make the controls easy to reach and extremely functional.

Next I had to think about where to position the duct outlets. The outlets are nice looking pieces and will look good no matter where I place them. The only condition to placement is to mount the outlets so that each one, and there are four of them, can be easily directed towards the occupants.

This is something that I gave some serious thought to earlier in the project. I knew I wanted the face of the dash to be uncluttered so I didn’t want to try and mount all four outlets to that panel. Instead I elected to place two of the outlets near the center of the dash and the other two below the dash on each cowl post. 

Where did I get the dash? This is a shop made unit. I used the original dash as a template and constructed this dash out of fiberglass. I gave the new dash a sloping top, in keeping with the shape of the original dash, and a flat front. The flat front gives the dash that clean and uncluttered look I’m looking for as well as provides an excellent platform upon which I can mount the gauges and switches.

The gauges are from the Auto Meter Street Rod Arctic White series and consist of a tachometer, speedometer, fuel gauge, oil pressure gauge, temperature gauge, volt gauge and a clock. A clock? You bet. The clock helps balance the gauges across the dash and since it is from Auto Meter it matches the other gauges.

The dash is refinished in a metallic gray to coordinate with the gray interior colors and is accented by the red band across the bottom. The red band is there to bring the outside graphics work into the car and will be continued onto the doors in the form of red vinyl trim once I reach that point in the build.

Project car provided by:

Larry Lyles, owner

LPL Body Works

www.lplbodyworks.com