With a warm/hot car, his airconditioning was chilly from the vents 20-30seconds of the car starting, and having it idle after moving it to a shady spot, within 5 minutes his cabin was in the low 20s (of a 35 degree day)
My roadster - moving it to the shade (after having been parked unavoidably in an direct sunlight area all day), the air con was cooler but not by a comfortable amount after 30 seconds, and after 2 minutes, was only just starting to be cold from the vents and with 5 minutes of running, the cabin was still uncomfortably hot.
Something had to be done!
A few minutes of reading and learnt that folk can insulate the air-conditioning lines in the engine bay..
I'm seriously questioning the common sense of some engineering decisions having run the compressor AC line right past the exhaust system, 5cm away from the headers, unshielded, uninsulated.. thats pretty dumb, and thats why i like to tweak the car..
I'd gone to a plumbing supplies shop and bought 2x 2meter lengths of pipe insualation, totalling about $10, and with 30 minutes of time and a bunch of cable ties, i'd covered up as much of the engine bay's AC lines as i could. Essentially theres only 20cm of exposed piping under the inlet manifold/alternator area that i cant physcially cover/reach.
I've covered both the feed line and return line.
My engine bay, in city driving on a hot day has reached 89 degrees (having measured it from my previous arduino project) - this is after having the car baking in the sun all day, and then driving stop start through a built up area.
On highway driving the engine bay is only 5-10 degrees above ambient.
This 89 degree bay temp will be heat-soaked into the aluminium AC lines and would be transferred into the fluid which would need to be cooled off by the condenser as well as the heat from the cabin. This just makes the condenser have to work even harder for no reason in order to try and cool..
With the insulation installed, and parked again in a hot day light area at work (still no available shade goddammit), and monday here was 42c.. Starting the car at the end of the day, aircon vents where flowing cold air within 15 seconds of being on. (keeping in mind the internal dash vent piping would have been baked by exposure the cabin heat). Within 5 minutes of driving the cabin temp was in the low 20s.
Anyone contemplating this, just do it. I'm looking forward to a highway trip to see how cold the cabin will actually get!
Also, driving with the roof down (in the 40deg day) and AC venting directed to your feet, you can feel the coolth while driving 60kph..
thicker pipe on left for the AC feed from the compressor, thinner pipe for the return line.
(Engine temps are measured at up to 89 deg at the rear top of the rocker cover - right where the return pipe passes)
The insulation is applied to all exposed AL piping, inc under the condensor at the front of the car.
The wire sitting over the top of the rocker cover is my temp probe - can move it around the bay to check on various temps/locations.
For the results, the price and the 'effort' involved with installing it, i couldn't recommend this enough for everyone with AC.
