Air Conditioning Part 1

I discovered my back has a set limit on the number of times I can get on the ground and back up again. I exceeded that limit getting the engine out. Cleaning the next day was a little painful. I worked on my air compressor leak Monday night through a fair amount of pain. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent on a heating pad while pounding tylenol. This limit was set much, much higher 30 years ago. Aging sucks.

However, I was able to get a little more done. One of the many upgrades planned for this summer is air conditioning! Just as my tolerance for working both above and below my car for a day has decreased, so has my tolerance for driving around in 115 degree weather with just the windows down. I went with a system from Classic Auto Air that should basically plug right in, but like all of these kits, it requires the heater box and fan housing to be removed. This box has a couple of screws that are right behind the passenger side wheel housing, so that needs to be moved out of the way. Which requires the fender to come off. Which requires the headlight door mechanism to be disassembled. Which is far easier if the grille is out, which requires the bumper to be removed. That’s what I spent my weekend doing.

I really didn’t want to remove this much sheet metal, but it is all so much easier to do now with the engine out. And getting those headlight doors to work again is part of this project, so that part was going to come out anyway. I was tempted to take the other side off as well, since that would make some of the engine installation tasks a little easier, but I remember how long it took to get those bent up pieces aligned properly the last time it was all off. I’ll leave the rest together until I start on the bodywork.

On kind of a side note, while I knew absolutely that this was not a “numbers matching” car, I was curious about where the major parts came from. My uncle told me the previous owner had replaced the engine with one from a 1971 Corvette. That engine was in bad shape when I first got the car, so I had a local guy rebuild it for me. After that engine detonated, there was some suspicion that the builder swapped out my block for another. Of course, back then it never occurred to me to get the block numbers or anything to compare with. Then the engine it has since was the one out of my dad’s ’74 Cheyenne Super.

The engine was as expected. From what I’ve found, V0219TJY decodes to a 160hp 350, 4bbl carb for a C10 made in Flint, MI on February 19. Actually, it looks like TJY was used in 1973, 74 and 75, but since that truck was only a couple of years old when my dad bought it, I’m going to assume it was the original engine.

The transmission was kind of a surprise. With a code of 11L108049, I think this means a 1971 Chevy made in LA. The last 6 digits should be the same as the car’s VIN. It doesn’t match Pandora’s at all, but I suspect the engine AND transmission came from that donor Corvette.

All this really means to me is that I can sell the transmission and not feel bad about getting rid of a usable, original Camaro part. I’m definitely keeping the old engine. As good as that thing ran with ~350,000 miles on it, the block is probably in really good shape and can be used when I build my own.