This is for anyone with a TT car or NA for that matter and having trouble finding a good working air con pump if like our's your is stuffed , and your willing to do a little work modifying your air con bracket and getting the two hose's that go to your pump modified at a shop. I went this route because we will have this car a long time and even though there's a bit of stuffing around you end up with a pump that you can get anywhere easily if there is a failure . This is what i did to mount the pump. This is what your stock air con pump bracket looks like . New Sanden air con pump and old TT pump. You can see the front ear of the new pump is in the exact right place only the rear is wrong and i will mod the stock pump bracket to fix that. stock bracket be for any cutting . Now remove the rear mount ear , i just used a 4" side grinder and 1mm cutting disk . The pump will now bolt to your bracket on the front mount but to get the pump housing to sit tight to the bracket you will have to make 2 small notch's in the front of the bracket, i used a die grinder for this. Using a milling bit in my drill press and the small 4 way vice that's bolted to my drill press , working slowly i milled 4 mm out of the rib's in the bracket. Next i cut and drilled the start of my adapter bracket out of 5mm steel plate. With the plate in place you can see i have to make spacers to fill the gap were the bolts go . I use a drop saw to cut the spaces and all 3 are different length's , then weld them to the back of the bracket . Out of 10mm steel i cut the new mounting ear and drilled and thread tapped it, the notch at the end is for room for one of the mounting bolts. The ear welded on to the mounting plate. Now at the end of the day 2 mount points for an air com pump is all you really need , i've run lots of pump's this way over the years with no worries at all , but seeing there was lots of room under the pump to make a third point i made one out of 3mm angle and drilled and tapped it .. If you really wanted to make a fourth point you could but i didn't. The 3 mounting bolts will be too short now you will have to get one's 20mm longer. Your 2 air con pipe's will have to be modified for the new pump fittings , the long small diameter pipe (presser side) is the right length to start with so tell the air con shop this when you take it in , the short big diameter pipe (suck side) need's to be made 100mm longer than stock over all . The next little bit of fun is that the heat shield on the exhaust is in the road of one of the pipes to be fitted , but there's plenty of air gap behind it be for you hit the exhaust itself so i cut a section out of it and miss judge'd it, it should have been smaller and then with a ball plane hammer folded it around for clearance then cut a cover out of 1mm plate and pop riveted it over the end . Next change the bullet wire end to a flat . The pulley on the front of the new pump is smaller than your stock pump so you will need a new belt , your old belt is a 4PK970 and the belt you will need now is a 4PK940 . Pump fitted with new belt . Air con pipe's fitted. The air con in the car is working better now than we have ever had it.
I only have your pictures as reference, but if the rear ear was the unmodified mount, would you still need to do the heat shield mod? The pulley is thick enough to be slightly forward and still hold the belt.
OK what your saying is leave the bracket as is and use a tube spacer on the front mount point so the pump is mounted forward , That would most likely make the rear pipe clear the heat shield and the wide pulley on front would still be right for the belt , but if you are using the stock radiator fan it will now be hitting the pulley on the air con pump and if not at speed when it will flex the most it will then and if like us you have a thick aftermarket radiator and the stock fan shroud it will now also be hitting the new pump , but if you are using a thermo fan and no shroud it mite just work ..
I'll have to take some pics tomorrow of everything in place and post up later to help show clearance ..
OK, so you must have considered that, because in the photos there is one accessory belt that is still forward of the compressor pulley. The compressor pulley, if mounted in a more forward position would only be slightly forward of that belt. If the radiator fan fouls, then there is an adapter to mount the fan forward. Sits on the fan clutch. Standard part sold by Gktech. http://www.gktech.com/index.php/sr-to-rb-clutch-fan-adapter.html
Ok so if you left the bracket stock and mounted the pump forward it would be out 20mm more than stock and i cut a bit of flat steel to that size and put it on the front of the pump to show were the pulley would end up . So the pump would be into the fan by a couple of mm , now if you trim the steel insert in the stock bracket you would gain a few mm back and if you trim the rear ear on the pump so it was not so thick you would get more mm you would also have to thread tap the same rear ear and most likely have to drill the stock hole in the air con bracket to suite the bolt you just threaded the hole for. At the end of the day what ever way you go your still going to have to mod things to make it all work , i wanted the pump to be in as stock position as i could get for clearance and i didn't want to mod the pump if i could get away with it so it would be a straight bolt on of the shelf deal , now if you want to mod the pump , space the fan etc then yes i think you would be able to do it with out cutting up the bracket as i did and i will admit that moding the bracket and making the adapter's for me is easy, done that in less than a day but show's that it can be done .
OK, thanks for the excellent photos. I see what you mean. The BLUE rectangle would be 20mm. Well on my car I could manage that, because my fan is more than 20mm away from that point, it is closer to my stock radiator to improve its efficiency. If I need to update my AC comp, I know which thread to search for, now.
Thanks for the idea about the aftermarket AC compressor. I am obviously interested in the concept for future. Lloyd, I took a photo of my gap (that ruler is 40mm wide) with the vortex design fan mounted on the standard Z32 clutch fan using the fan spacer to move the fan blades closer to the radiator so they are within the standard fan cowl. (Makes fan more efficient) There is about 80mm gap between the fan blades and the stock Nissan Non Turbo radiator. You can just see the black spacer looking at the front of the clutch fan. So does this mean I would be able to fit your recommended AC Compressor with just a 12mm? spacer (as you mentioned in earlier post) on the front mount. No need to mod the heat shield to clear plumbing elbows.?
Mate tomorrow arvo i'll pull the turbo intake pipe off again so i can get to every thing again( i didn't do that the other day )and run the tape around everything again and take pic's but i'm thinking you would be fine if you have 40 mm to play with..
No need Lloyd, Your pics are excellent and I can see that I wouldn't have any probs. Non Turbo so it would be easier, just use the spacer on the stock fan and use a tube spacer on the front compressor mount. Others with thicker radiators would have to check clearance of the fan in front and behind to know which way to mount the AC compressor.
OK finally had time to pull the turbo intake pipe off and try and run a tape measure around , not as easy as i thought it was going to be but anyway pretty much got what i wanted to get and explore the using the stock bracket idea that QLDZDR has put forward. I've done a ruff drawing and to show lengths i found out ( was just easier and quicker for me to do that way ) now with running the tape around i found that if you use the stock air con bracket the pump will be 15 mm forward than stock and NOT the 20 mm i thought be for , so seeing the pump was in the fan 2 mm at 20 mm it should be 3 mm clearance at 15 mm ( not enough for me ). In the drawing black ink is the after market pump , purple ink is the stock air con bracket and blue ink is the spacer you would need if you went this way. Now if you look at the top pipe going into the pump you will see my steel ruler showing where the heat shield would be ,now the pipe is 10 mm and is moving forward 15 mm so i'm thinking you should have around 5 mm clearance to the heat shield or maybe a bit more.SO yes looks like it can be done both ways , with the stock bracket you will need a 15 mm spacer between the front mount ear and the bracket and a longer bolt ,you will then have to tap a thread into the rear ear of the pump and then drill the hole out in the mounting bracket to suit the bolt you just threaded the ear for.Then space your fan forward and then you should be all good so Yes it can be done both ways but you will have to work out how long the hose's will be after you mount the pump.. A good all round learning curve i think ..
Nice work Lloyd. Keeping that Merc just as cool on the inside as it is on the outside would be challenging
A few post back, I mentioned using a GKTech fan adapter to move the position of the stock fan forward. Yes, it moves the GKtech fan forward, but this only adapts the GKtech fan bolt pattern to the stock Zed fan clutch bolt pattern. So some other kind of spacer is needed, that is balanced and true. I just pulled the bits off my car if anyone wants me to add some side by side photos of both fans and fan clutch and adapter.
