NOS AC System!!! Were we all sleeping?

Noted that there are three vents in this one! 868 had one blocked off......

Another pic

Made in Spain....

Great reference shots!

...were these by Roland ?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/DeTom...047675.m43663.l10137

Steve, yeah, funny, I never removed the cover plate to see what is there ! I bought a pile of Goose parts before and ended up with (3) used vents and a NOS knob...
At least this answers that Yes, Ayacsa was Spanish ! But until another 50 year old NOS unit shows up, looks like I'll have to just re-varnish the old wood grain on mine....

Lee,

Under the little cover on my AC unit....... I found a great big..... nothing! Nada. Nothing in the vault!

What kind of wood do suppose that is....Spanish pine???

The one thing I wanted to do to my unit, but never got done, was to put a bigger fan motor in it....or have the original one re-wound to get more RPM's out of it. That is the one thing that this lacks....the power to push out enuf air to cool the interior of the car.

Ciao!

I recall reading somewhere in here where someone used a Behr motor with minimal adjustments, but no specific model was given...

Yes, it was a post from LeeA... used a motor from an Alfa Spider...

Lee, any update on how/if it worked?

MH

Mike, good thing you've seen my car---that post from 2014 was one of the last things I did before fleeing the country... But yeah, the good news is that the basic guts were Behr for the fan (made in Fort Worth as I remember), and probably Borletti for the evaporator. The amount of change to even 80's Alfa in these seems incredibly limited, but I've watched for years (w/o success) to find a setup from a 60's Duetto...
Whatever Ayacsa did for a living otherwise is a mystery, but they could have been as little as a sheet metal shop...Still the question remaining is whether the vents were used anywhere else.
So the good news (esp. given Steve's observation that the right-most side of the AC box is covered in a Goose) whoever bought this set may have (1) NOS vent available...great chance to become someone's new best friend...Lee

Btw, it would be interesting to know when the right vent was covered over---at least the picture of 8ma502 shows the 3rd vent is Not covered...so maybe one of the drivers got jealous the passenger was getting all the cooling...

The vents themselves are shown as a spare in the Mangusta parts book---so probably became spares as Detomaso pulled them out of the Ayacsa air box! Lee

Did you ever figure out the wiring? if so, does it push more air than the original blower motor

MH

My car (8MA 1028) also only has 2 vents and a cover plate which is just plain odd as its just a blanking plate.
Although this is a little off topic, I needed to get a working (and effective) A/C system quickly for the Targa Florio event I posted about on Mangusta owner section in Sicily i did a few weeks ago.

My car (currently) has plexi side windows and these were fixed permanently up for racing. You can just about jiggle them down manually but the plexi is flat and not curved...

(Purists look away now.......)

So I fitted a slimline Vintage Air unit and while clearly not standard, its shape and dimensions are not that different (1/2 inch wider). I know it does;t look exactly right but I can tell you it pumps out plenty of really cold air even on lowest fan setting and for $360 plus taxes plus etc etc I thought it was good value. Apologies for the very poor photos while work was ongoing but it will give you an idea. Passenger legroom was ok too, it didn't seem to extend any lower than the Spanish unit. I'll keep it in there while we do these type of events and have my Spanish system restored but I doubt it'll be as good.

At some point I may look into using the face / grills part of the original unit and see if there is a way of grafting on the Vintage Air unit behind the original face, depending on the performance of the original and if we can conceal everything.

Someone did say to me the original evaporator, and the small compressor could just about do a good job of trying to cool the car on a Spring day in Finland. Even in UK we need more than that!!!

still haven't found how to attach multiple pictures.....

V8jet, that is a great looking dash ! Mike, good questions, the amazing coincidence in life is that (as I was preparing my move and selling another car) the person who called to chat on my Ebay listing turned out to be the very the person Steve mentioned (the founder of Classic Auto Air), Al. Another member on this forum has the same Mangusta Al modified (and years later, I bought a stash of the 'not perfect enough' parts from the same car, including the AC vents and original evaporator).

My bet is that changing the fan motor is NOT going to help, but since I think the same basic Fan was used on Pantera maybe there is some record of people trying. The 80's Alfa Spyder fan and the 60's original Goose fan are so identical to suggest there wasn't much room for improvement.

Removing the cover from the rightmost vent should relieve some amount of backpressure from the fan, an easy way to test is to listen if the fan speed slows down when that panel is removed...If it doesn't, then the evaporator is what is limiting the airflow.

At least another member here has considered upgraded condensers (esp, thicker ones available for a Pantera). The good news about me being half a world away from my car (and not having to actually care if the AC is cold!) is that I can imagine originality (the Tecumseh HG500 compressor) would be better for the car than the rotary compressor on it now...Lee

V8Jet.....

You can only post one pic per post on this forum site we are presented with....... would be nice to be able to do up to 5 or so per post.

That underdash unit looks nice!!! At least a good tribute to the original, and sounds like it works great!

I upgraded the compressor in my car to a rotory pump, and it worked great, nice a quiet. I don't know what the capacity (CuIn's) is of the Tecumseh. The typical rotary is about 7-8CI IIRC.

I had some conversations with Al at one point....and it basically ended with "send us the unit and we can fit more into it...." but I never got any further for one reason or two others......until I did the pump change....only to find out that the cold was there....just wasn't pumping it into the cabin...!

However, the issue (to me) is air throughput thru the evap unit. I don't believe it to be a restriction of the evaporator, but simply the fan!

Even on high, it was more like low on any other unit......which just isn't enuf to cool a "house of glass" like the Goose!

That's my take....but as always, "your mileage may vary!"

Wonder if any Pantera owners have comment on this setup ?
http://precisionproformance.com/ac1070.php