Thread: Aircon. That old chestnut

Pete, correct me if I'm wrong, but you want a custom ac setup, utilizing existing facia and want to nominate how much you want to spend?

Good luck, you have lots of these threads, I think you may have to realize it's going to cost you money unless you DIY

There is (or was) a lot of unused space inside/below the parcel shelf of a County and I would assume also the Defender. An acquaintence spent a lot of time and effort fabricating special ducting that ran the air behind the facia and below the parcel tray but as Rovercare says, you'll need deep pockets if you want someone to do it for you.

Thanks People

Geez Rove I didn't think I had posted that many threads about aircon or do you mean about me being a tight arse in general

I would have thought for $ 2000-$2500 that wouldn't be much for someone to make up a matching box with an evap coil , heat coil and decent fan. I could be wrong

I would love to do a heap of stuff myself but being technically challenged and spare time challenged makes that difficult.

I am prepared to spend money if it's needed but I don't think it hurts to see if others with better contacts and brains than mine have better /cheaper / more effective ideas and answers do you?

Maybe the $ 3000 if it is guaranteed to work really well is worth it!!

You could, as suggestedfit a roof unit and duct it forward so it isn't on the back of your neck. That said, mine is blowing on the back of my neck and its quite nice on a hot day.. but each to their own.

2500 doesn't buy a lot of shop time when you consider parts, design, stuffing around, trial and error and the possiblity of you not being happy with it at the end. It would take a week, and your defender would be taking a lot of space up in the shop while they turned away mire profitable jobs... Not eying to be a jerk about it just thinking from their perspective.

Ive thought about this a lot as I was in the same position as you.. and found it too expensive to get any custom work done.. but the shop wasn't really making anything off it either. So I signed up for tafe and now I'm doing my own stuff... And well now I understand why they were not so keen

Have you seen those air con systems that blow air into a 'pillow' with millions of tiny holes in it? The pillow inflates and air is dispersed everywhere.

You could take this and completely replace the roof lining in your county with the pillow, then the roof mounted unit wouldn't be blowing air on your neck, it would fill the cabin
Something I've considered, but doing a refurb on factory air first to see if it's really worth it

The sloping roof didn't stop this guy (although it wasn't recommended by the guy that fitted my red dot)





I too was a bit worried about the cold air on back of neck thing, but as said, its nice on a hot day. Doesn't worry me and you can rotate the outlets away if you want to. Not suggesting this will suit you, just sharing the lived experience.

I don't know what the County unit is like, but I assume if like the Defender, you could reclaim significant front leg room if rid if it. Might be worth considering in the mix the benefit of that also?

Interesting, I run a 3/4 roof rack similar to the defender in the photo so only have the sloped front section of the roof avail for the A/C unit. This looks OK, I wonder how the water drain from the evaporator is, the main reason I can see for them recommending you run it flat is due to the drip tray for collecting the water. If you could modify the tray it should work OK or otherwise the water will just run onto the windscreen.

I need to get aircon in my old 90. My mind was set on a red-dot r2000 evaporator/blower on the front slope of the headlining, this would somehow hook up to the other AC components under bonnet. I didnt want an externally mounted AC unit on my roof!

I've come to realise how difficult this would be to do without making unsightly adjustments to the interior/exterior and it costing a fortune!

Then I had an idea for a cheaper 'out of sight' option..

The other day I took off the heater unit from the bulkhead because the matrix/core was leaking. I bypassed the heater and now have the whole unit on my garage floor. Got me thinking.. could you not just put an evaporator matrix in place of the heater matrix!? Sure you would loose your heating but Id much rather drive with a jacket when it gets cold than drive in a rage, sweating and dizzy when its a 30C+ day!!

In my mind it shouldnt be difficult to hook the compressor, condenser, receiver/drier etc under the bonnet so that it passes the refrigerant through an evaporator housed in your existing blower unit.

You would then use your existing blower controls on dash to control fan speed and mix outside air with cooled air (warmer/colder) . You would only need to add a switch to the dash to turn the compressor on/off

The air would come out of the standard holes, unfortunately that means cold front window and toes. You could modify the vents that are directed to your feet so that they blow upwards or maybe even find some directional vents that can be made to work.

If this is cheap/easy to do then the drawbacks are:
- no heater
- external air only - no recirc - not filtered
- land rover blower not the most powerful!
- box limits evaporator size, I'm no expert but could be too small to get properly cold output?


Thoughts.