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Preparation for Classic Retrofit Electrocooler installation


austria3

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In the following a short summery of modification/changes I had to make on my car

Engine type 930/03, car first registered August 1978 which makes it an early SC model.

 

1. Washer Bottle - the big one under the left front fender has to go

I first toyed with the idea of changing to the small intensive washer bottle (option on later cars – 86 onward or so, I don’t know for sure). Part number 91162802700. Unfortunately it is no longer available from Porsche and not remanufactured so there are not many available and used ones still sell for around 80 Euro. Also you have to make a cut out in your front trunk carpet which I didn't want.

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So I bought a standard washer bottle on Ebay

 

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2. Alternator:

Standard on this engine is a 70A alternator with external charging regulator

I contacted  Faro GmbH in German who 13 years ago exchanged my back then broken alternator with a new one, they are still in business and did exchange my 70A alternator with a 90A one for 327 Euros delivered. A cheaper option would have been to buy a new one from sources like Lager11 314 Euro + postage and sell the old one. But since my old alternator had worn out bearings this was an easier option for me.

Unfortunately the new alternator is slightly longer than the old one, 11mm to be exact.

So this requires machining off some material of the fan housing. I talked to a metalworking shop and was told that this would be a great risk as my fan housing already has a small crack and it would be possible to destroy the part in the process.

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So I searched the net and found the German company CarPoint. They are selling brand new fan housings for 415 Euros delivered

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Unfortunately it turned out my fan has only a diameter of 225mm and not the required 245mm of the later model years.

So I had to buy a new fan too – which is only available from Porsche – another 420 Euros spent

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One thing I did notice when I tried to put it all together – the cover on the back of the alternator is also different/larger. You need part number 911 106 055 01 for the 90A alternator, which is still available from Porsche for around 100 Euros. Or you try to make the existing on fit by enlarging existing holes and cutting new holes, like I did.

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3. Wiring

3.1 Ground wire alternator – engine

On top: New 16mm²/100A wire covered in silicon heat protection sleeve, ends covered in shrinking tube, old one on bottom, hard and brittle from heat I guess 

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3.2 Alternator – starter

Recommended size: 110A or 16mm2 - See difference to existing one (on the right):

 

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Here is an overview where the wire goes after it disappears trough the engine shroud

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Underneath the car you can see the wire easily after removing the starter

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As I found it impossible to remove the whole wire I just pulled the wire as far out as I could, then cut it off, put some shrinking tube over the end and pushed the wire as far back in the wiring loom as I could so it would clear the room for the new wire at the two difficult points: oil cooler tin/rubber part (see picture above bottom arrow) and rubber grommet at engine shroud behind alternator.

Then I took the new wire put a black sleeve over it to replicate the factory look and pushed it through the rubber grommet at the engine shroud coming from the alternator side. Routed the wire beside the existing loom to the right engine side.

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Then I pushed it straight toward the front of the car – this is where you hardly can see the wire, I did it more by feeling (reaching around the whole inlet manifold to the front of the engine) but in the end it appeared right beside the rubber part on top of the oil cooler tin cut out.  Pushing it through this part was hard work.

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While putting it all together I noticed that I had to lengthen the small red wire (see arrow)

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New alternator has the following connection points:

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4. Battery

Changed my 67Ah to 88Ah which is considerable larger (and a bit heavier) then the old one.

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With the washer bottle space is now a bit tight up front ….

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Interesting info.

I (like lots of other IB'ers)  already have the Porsche small intensive washer bottle. Also means the massive, stock front wing washer bottle delete has also already been done :)

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This is the main thing putting me off. The price of the kit is not inconsiderable at almost £4k including VAT and delivery. My fan housing is 35 years old, gone through thousands of heat cycles meaning it will not like being machined so I'll need a new one, plus the cost of the uprated alternator, the sundries, the awkwardness of installing it all meaning it'll take an amateur like me most of a weekend, if not longer.

It looks an awesome bit of kit and if it was plug and play on an SC I would probably have gone for it. When the total cost of the parts is going to be getting on for £5k, plus many hours and much lost knuckle skin it's a step too far right now.

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Nice write up Stefan!  That's bad luck with your fan housing but I guess in the long run it would have needed replacing at some point.  I hadn't realised the '77S fan is smaller - good to know.

Putting A/C in your car is never going to be super easy or cheap.  I do think that our system is much easier to fit than the Porsche system or the kits offered by US companies (both are the same layout).  I have spoken to a few specialists about fitting 'other' kits and the general consensus is they allow 4 to 5 days.  On non-A/C cars, you have to cut several large holes in the front bulkhead which is a no-no as far as I'm concerned.  One specialist said he would never fit one again as the customer didn't realise these implications which left him in an awkward position.

If you treat the alternator upgrade as a separate project (as Stefan has), then it should be doable easily within a weekend.  It is definitely DIY with common tools apart from the gassing obviously.  I still have the skin on my knuckles and have installed my system at least 5 times during development.

Price wise, I have a Carrera 3.2 quotation here from a popular US A/C brand.  Despite the low advertised cost on their website, the quote is for $3,867 (£3038) before sales and shipping.  Shipping and duty will bring that to £3700.  Add workshop time (say 28 hours @ £75 + VAT)  £2520.   So over £6.5K.

In Australia, a turnkey A/C install on a 911 is $10000 AUD which is £6K again.

£2995 + VAT & shipping for our system starts to look pretty reasonable IMO.  

 

 

Edited by Jonny Hart
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Oh I'm not knocking what you've achieved, Jonny. It looks a great bit of kit and well thought out, especially using the original holes, etc. It's still going to cost me, as a Joe Bloggs who cannot write off VAT against a business, over £5k for all the bits when I include a new fan shroud (£500), alternator (£550), intensive washer (£100?), fan? (£400) later baffles (£100), cable, sundries. I still have to do my best as an amateur to fit it all too and having had the alternator out before I know it's a bit of a pig of a job for a man with my sausage fingers, let alone routing the cables, finding someone with the crimping tool for 16mm cable, paying someone to vac the system and fill it with refrigerant, etc. (Prices from Type911 including VAT and delivery)

Compared to retrofitting a factory system yours looks good value and I would sorely like to buy one of your systems, but it's still >£5k for some cool air and it's hard for me as a pauper to justify. Especially when I have to take the gamble that I'll actually be able to fit the system myself and not take it to a specialist. To put it into perspective, 5 years ago I bought my 911 with MoT for £7.5k. If I could have fitted your system with a normal set of tools for £3k then I'd probably be swearing at my chubby, skinned knuckles right now as I was fitting it.

Edited by Kenny Senior
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23 hours ago, Kenny Senior said:

Oh I'm not knocking what you've achieved, Jonny. It looks a great bit of kit and well thought out, especially using the original holes, etc. It's still going to cost me, as a Joe Bloggs who cannot write off VAT against a business, over £5k for all the bits when I include a new fan shroud (£500), alternator (£550), intensive washer (£100?), fan? (£400) later baffles (£100), cable, sundries. I still have to do my best as an amateur to fit it all too and having had the alternator out before I know it's a bit of a pig of a job for a man with my sausage fingers, let alone routing the cables, finding someone with the crimping tool for 16mm cable, paying someone to vac the system and fill it with refrigerant, etc. (Prices from Type911 including VAT and delivery)

Compared to retrofitting a factory system yours looks good value and I would sorely like to buy one of your systems, but it's still >£5k for some cool air and it's hard for me as a pauper to justify. Especially when I have to take the gamble that I'll actually be able to fit the system myself and not take it to a specialist. To put it into perspective, 5 years ago I bought my 911 with MoT for £7.5k. If I could have fitted your system with a normal set of tools for £3k then I'd probably be swearing at my chubby, skinned knuckles right now as I was fitting it.

I think you are still way over estimating the alternator update.  On an SC, you wont need a new fan, housing or baffles.  Water bottles are cheap enough.  A/C test and charge is around £50.  Many electrical places will make up the cables for you with the crimps as they do them for battery cables.

We are talking to a manufacturer about a high output alternator (110A) which is likely to be around £300.  It might even fit the SC housing without modification.

18 hours ago, GaryH said:

As an aside, does anyone have the weights for the 3.0 (70a) and 3.2 (90a) alternators?  :whistling:

..and it's lighter than both of the above (5kg).

(standard SC alternator is 5.25kg)

 

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6 hours ago, Jonny Hart said:

We are talking to a Manufacturer about a high output alternator (110A) which is likely to be around £300.  It might even fit the SC housing without modification.

WOSP? 

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On 26.6.2017 at 3:05 PM, Kenny Senior said:

finding someone with the crimping tool for 16mm cable

I did buy these type of cable shoes

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and used the standard crimping tool I had at home which is only rated for 6mm² cables

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but I gave it a try and it and it did work quite well. So no special tool needed :D

cable, clables sleeves and so so on add up to about 30 Euros.

 

7 hours ago, Jonny Hart said:

We are talking to a manufacturer about a high output alternator (110A) which is likely to be around £300.  It might even fit the SC housing without modification.

I want to point out there are at least three different styles of alternators out there

-81 external voltage regulator, hexogan nut M16x1

82- internal voltage regulator, hexogan nut M17x1,5

90A from ?? , hexogan nut M17x1,5

as mentioned above I changed my alternator before from external to internal voltage regulator type and had do enlager the inner diameter of the fan - no changes to fan housings where required

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On 6/26/2017 at 11:42 AM, Jonny Hart said:

£2995 + VAT & shipping for our system starts to look pretty reasonable IMO.  

Knowing a little about the challenges Jonny has had to over come in making his system fit so well into an unmolested car and development required to match the cooling performance of a modern AC system system I think the price is good value and well worth the outlay.

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, GaryH said:

WOSP? 

Could be!  110A is just the starting point.  We're discussing using internals from new generation alternators.  Potentially this could give 175A Max output and over 100A at idle.  This is not unusual in today's cars which need huge capacity mainly because of the burden of stop/start systems.

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I do think that Mr Austria should be allowed his thread for the interesting subject that it is and discussion over the cost of the actual Air Con and development of other parts put on their own (deserving)  thread.

JMTPW

 

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10 hours ago, Phill said:

I do think that Mr Austria should be allowed his thread for the interesting subject that it is and discussion over the cost of the actual Air Con and development of other parts put on their own (deserving)  thread.

JMTPW

 

+10

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Received the 110A alternator this week and installed it in the car.  It has been made to fit ALL fan housings from 1974 to 1989.  Initial tests look excellent, output better than the 90A unit I have been running.  Need to do a couple more tests but will probably be listing these on our website.

(Apologies to austria3/Stefan on the timing of this!)

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22 minutes ago, Jonny Hart said:

Received the 110A alternator this week and installed it in the car.  It has been made to fit ALL fan housings from 1974 to 1989.  Initial tests look excellent, output better than the 90A unit I have been running.  Need to do a couple more tests but will probably be listing these on our website.

(Apologies to austria3/Stefan on the timing of this!)

If these 'new age' beefier alternators are now an option does this open up the possibility to introduce electric heat as well as cooling as I thought the biggest problem was lack of amperage?

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35 minutes ago, ALEX P said:

If these 'new age' beefier alternators are now an option does this open up the possibility to introduce electric heat as well as cooling as I thought the biggest problem was lack of amperage?

Possibly but agree we should start a new thread for that rather than keep hijacking the OPs.

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