Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Chill My Ride: Discount AC Parts.com

When I bought my car, a 2001 Hyundai Accent, I was a pizza guy, so I went looking for the ultimate pizza car (for western Washington, that is). I got lucky and found one in the form of my five speed manual transmission 1.5L four cylinder engine car that did not have an AC system. It had just a little more than 40,000 miles on it when I bought it in April of 2004 and the payment amounted to around one night's worth of wages, tips, and delivery charges, so the other days of the month were pure profit (minus fuel charges, of course, which in 2004 were nothing compared to now). It was the perfect fuel sipping pizza delivery vehicle.

After my pizza guy days ended I headed off to grad school in eastern Washington, and I now live in south-central Washington in Walla Walla. This is not western Washington - it's hotter over here!

I am not longer a pizza guy (I miss it a lot at times though), but I still have my ultimate pizza guy car, so no AC system. When I came across a link for a Ford ac compressor from discountacparts.com - something previously unavailable except through dealerships - it got me to thinking about my car. What if I could get my own air conditioning compressor and other necessary auto ac parts to install into my vehicle?

I looked around the Discount AC Parts website for a little while and found that components for my car would run me just a bit under $400 (if I understand the systems well enough to account for everything I would need). It's the end of July right now, but from August until mid-October I can expect it to stay hot here. It might be a bit late to get started on a project like this now, but when summer 2009 rolls around, it would be nice to already have in place...

Something to think about, that's for sure. Until then I'll just keep telling myself that sweating bullets while sitting at stop lights is good for me.

2 comments:

The Krowbar said...

I had a '68 Chevy pickup with an after-market AC that was quite large, but definitely not a GM part. On a 100+ degree day, it could chill the cab of that truck to a temperature where you could actually see your breath.
Hit the junkyards and see if you can find one of those. Wire it in place in the hatchback, put a switch on your dash, and you're set!

Paul E. Zimmerman, M.A. said...

Now that sounds like a plan! I take it that the unit would have to be the all-electric type for this to work? I doubt my car could support anything belt driven anyway, so probably. :)

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