Horizontal radiator/ AC condenser

Hello,

I was sorting out some flaking underseal at the front of my van today and while poking around I poked the horizontal radiator thing at the front behind the bumper and some of the core fin part crumbled ! It literally turned into dust ! So I guess it is in a bad way but I don't really know what exactly it is or what it does, so I've got a couple of questions...

It comes up on the parts diagrams as part of the AC and that it is a condenser but does it have water going through it and is it part of the main cooling system or is it a separate AC thing ? I can't see any water hoses involved but maybe they're somewhere else I don't know.

If it fell apart would I just lose my AC or would I be in trouble with the engine cooling ?

Thank you.

ps. Is it a real nasty job to remove and can this sort of thing be re cored like a radiator ?

Good evening Nick.

Yes to most of that. The power pack assembly, if yours has the front radiator, has the condenser on top sandwiched to a lower engine radiator with a seal between.

The condenser removes heat from the cabin. As part of that exchange, the evaporator under the dash gets cold. If you put a fan behind it you just invented air conditioning. The compressor circulates the coolant. Phase change from liquid to gas back to liquid is the driver of heat transfer.

If your condenser fails, you will lose your refrigerant and by extension your AC…so not the best news.

I would determine if you have a lower radiator and an upper condenser to see if your engine is involved in this equation.

To remove the whole thing is a pain. To make room I pulled the front bumper and anything else in the way. I’ll attach some photos so you can see if yours is the same or maybe just a condenser which would be easier to remove.

Does that answer your questions Sir?

Good Luck and God Bless
-Bryan

blgraverly.. Firstly.. Nice fan, way better than my dusty looking thing stuck in a cage !

Thanks for the information and the pictures it's really helped a lot, you have definitely answered my questions and put me on the right path.

I think I've just got a condenser as yours looks a lot higher than mine and has water hoses on the same sides as the air con pipes ( I definitely have none there ). So that could be good news and today I found somebody that can get any sized condenser made.. I just have to remove the old one first so he can copy it, his should work out quite a bit cheaper than trying to buy one so that's good and it takes about ten days.

I'm going to give it a good inspection to make sure about what I've got and then a good test to see how well the ac works. However there's the gas issues, I'm not too keen on cracking open gas pipes that have been there for thirty years it could go wrong very fast and I'm not happy with the idea of gassing myself... So any clues on how to go about this would be great.

My van goes into the body shop next week for a few little things and I want to keep it in one piece until it returns but if it's just a condenser then I shouldn't have any issues with going around without a condenser for a while. I'll just seal up the pipes and cable tie everything out of the way. It'll also give me a good chance at cleaning up the protective shield and brackets which are showing their age.

Time to start going mad with the WD40 in advance of the removal !

Thanks again,

Nick.

ps.. Awesome footwear !

It was just a condenser and I didn't have any problems getting it out as soon as I noticed one of the gas pipes wasn't connected to it. that meant no gas to worry about so I just undid the bolts and the other gas pipe and dropped it straight out.

The fan was disconnected and the whole thing looked like it had been under the sea for the last ten years ! It's knackered with the rust going rusty and it obviously hasn't been working for ages. There's no point in repairing it only to discover something else leaks or was the faulty part that caused whoever owned it to shut down the whole system. I bought this van last year and never used the aircon and now it's officially goodbye aircon.

In the future if I think I really need it then I'd rather take a system out of a newer car that got rear ended and put that in as I've got the connections to the dashboard along with the compressor attachment set up on the engine and modern cars have smaller systems. Even buying a complete system brand new for another car is cheaper than trying to fix this mess.

So with all that new space that I've acquired at the front I'm going to put in an electric fan to blast the engine if necessary.. I guess at least one of us has to stay cool and I can always open the windows !

Before and after, I now have no air con but a cool engine if necessary, only windows and fan for me but I'm unlikely to blow a gasket or have steam coming out of my ears !

For some reason the pictures won't show, no idea what's going on !




Ahh that's better, you have to press insert all !

And the one that got missed !

man the old 1 looks a relic from titanic!!

also is no-one gona mention what the hell those things are your wearing!! hahaha