74 Chief Restore

[bkilby]

INDEED . . .

Yeah yeah. Says the guy vacationing in FL because he's not liking the cold winter. Lol! Hey, I'm within 50 feet of my rig.

[cu4whln]

Yeah yeah. Says the guy vacationing in FL because he's not liking the cold winter. Lol! Hey, I'm within 50 feet of my rig.

Ha ha Bradly . . .

BUT - Mine has made HUGE progress while I am away !!

[bkilby]

Ha ha Bradly . . .

BUT - Mine has made HUGE progress while I am away !!

Well that is true.


I'll have an update on the AC soon. Buying parts, remembering we forgot to do this, etc. I had to buy another dryer as I realized the one I had sucked, so off to Vintage Air and got their dryer with a trinary switch built in. Should be here tomorrow. More to come later!

[Kaiserjeeps]

Great stuff to catch up on. I like the wiring work as it looks great. You have a nice rig Brad. Looking forward to more of course. Thanks for the word on my wife in the other thread. I too know of a couple guys that lost their wives to covid. It is not really the best thing to mention in someones build thread. But I am mad and want to shout out about it. It is hard to never mention it. I do appreciate the word on it. Thank you.. And I could not help but notice the "Rough Road" sign. I also have one hanging up, LOL Every wheelers shop should have one...
Keep up the awesome work. Good stuff...

[bkilby]

Thanks Kaiserjeeps. I know we haven't worked on this rig for a bit but we're trying to get back on it. Taking a year off made us forget quite a few things. We forgot where we left off. Lol.


So the plan was to connect with the local AC guy and get as much work done before taking to him to get the hoses made and charge the system. I bought the tool to crimp my own hoses but you can see how fast we're on that.
Anyhow, we discussed what parts, where to route hoses etc. We got a game plan down with him and went back to the shop to get the under dash unit installed. Did a couple of mock up fits and was going to finish installing it the next day. Well, that's when we realized we hadn't cut the holes into it yet for the new AC vents. Those are kind of important. Lol. So we proceed to cut the holes. We used 8/32 rivnuts and screws along with a sealant to secure them.















Went and bought new vent louvers too. They're chrome, which I'd prefer black, but they really don't look that bad. And they were $7.50 each at my local big truck shop! Peterbilt 41018 before anyone asks. We had to open the rectangle holes a bit to make them fit, but this AC unit used vents that had 4 pins to secure them. The other AC unit I have on the shelf had the correct size holes. I'm assuming it's a early vs. later year thing.










One of the things I had to buy was a trinary switch. Well, found out Vintage Air had a drier with the switch built in so I paid the extra shipping charge to get it here by Friday (yesterday). Well what do you know, all I had to do was buy the switch as my current drier already had the port for a switch. Not $100 well spent but whatever. Anyhow, got that mounted up today. I used the stock pre-bent tube from the factory drier to the new condenser with new o-rings and mounted it.












Oh! Forgot to mention the new AC vents are going to work awesome! That blower motor puts out enough air to use all 8 vents. I can feel air at the back seat.

[bkilby]

Had to order more parts. Vintage Air told me about a company that has all kinds of weird fittings that they don't carry so after a bit of website surfing, I placed an order. Parts should be here tomorrow. The plan is to run the hoses behind the grill and not across the engine. We'll see if the parts I ordered will allow that to happen. Update soon!

[rang-a-stang]

That's cool! (pun intended)

[bkilby]

So after some fiasco ordering of parts, and getting some wrong parts, we finally have, I believe, all we need and then some. The AC guy I'm going to use was cool enough to come to my shop yesterday so we can talk about what we're doing and get a game plan. I'm suppose to call Monday to make sure he can take the rig in and if so, off it goes Monday to get finished. Crossing fingers and hope it all works out.


Being a late model engine with -12 low side and -8 high side, it makes it a bit of a challenge to connect to the old stuff of -10 high side and -6 low side. Not to mention custom fittings etc. He's going to have to solder some aluminum tubing here and there to accomplish what we want. Hope it all works out!

[rang-a-stang]

Fingers crossed!! Hopefully it will be cold just in time for spring!

[bkilby]

So, to install the under dash unit, you have to connect both hoses first because there's no good way to get in there and tighten the hoses. So we had the AC guy crimp a couple of hoses with extra hose on the other end, and we installed the under dash unit. Dropped the rig off a couple of days later only to get a call telling us something is leaking at the hose connections on the under dash unit. Just great. We have to pull the passenger seat and center console just to get that unit out of there. After we got it out, we replaced the o-rings again and this time took it back to be pressure tested BEFORE installing it. Turns out the new Expansion Valve was the culprit as it leaked between the silver piece and brass body. Take that $20 and toss it in the trash. Lol.





We had a couple of old spares laying around so we cleaned one up and installed it. This one tested good so back to my shop to re-install the under dash unit. Again.



Got every thing buttoned up and took it back to the AC shop again and this time got the system charged. Sucess! Lol. This was Friday (2 days ago) and it was hot. 97* hot. The AC coming out of the Jeep was around 70* when the blower was on high but dropped to 38-40 when the blower was on low. I don't know if we can do any better than that. Maybe get a couple more degrees if we put an electric fan on the Condenser....if there's room. Oh yeah, the fitting at the suction port was leaking oil a bit Friday but after tightening them more, it seems to have stopped leaking. Time will tell.



Anyhow, some pics of the final install. I tried to keep the clutter out of the engine compartment as much as possible. All you can see is the high/low hoses going to the evaporator on one side and again to the compressor on the other. Both charge ports are behind the grill. The suction port will be hidden behind the grill. The high side will be hidden behind the "pie plates" that I haven't made yet.

[bkilby]

One of the "special" fittings used to accomplish this job was one with 180* bend. At $9.00, it was a no brainer so we can point the hose to the Drivers side instead of routing the hose in the engine compartment. Most of the fittings we used came from https://coldhose.com. Vintage Air recommended them.

[bkilby]

Actually, now that I look at the dryer and AC port through the grill, I might not make those pie pans after all. The stuff is hard to see.

[bkilby]

So, a while back, in May to be exact, I bought new seats for the Cherokee. The thought process was to start with seats that weren't made 48 years ago and have them upholstered how I want them. I went to Summit Racing and ordered seats from TMI Products. (https://www.summitracing.com/parts/TIP-S66252) I have a couple of buddies that run them and they're nice quality. They were the same basic height, width and length as the factory low back seat with the same bolt pattern. They came in and sat in the warehouse until we had time to install them.



So the time comes to install and we do the normal of sand blast and paint and get it all ready to go in only to find out they way their sliders work, the fingers hit the factory seat brackets. So, we made some spacers. Not a big deal really. We get them mounted in and admire them for a minute before we realize something ain't right. After futzing with them and making calls to TMI, we all determined the seats were manufactured wrong. TMI was really cool about it and handled the return directly instead of making us go through Summit Racing. Long story short, we got the new seats back in a couple of weeks and installed them. Now, I know I took pics of the new seats but realized after I started this update that I don't have pics. So, I'll have to get some tomorrow and update with better pics but for now....


Brackets getting prettied up.







The spacer we had to make. I think it's 3/16" thick.





The spacer sitting on their sliders.





These are the "fingers" that hit the factory bracket when pivoting the slider lever. The spacer gave enough room for them to not hit.





Installed.












The old crooked seats.

[cu4whln]

Nice they stand behind their product!



Of course - you ARE the "Brad Kilby" after all ! lol

[bkilby]

The finished install.