pros...
--air flow to the radiator
--40-50 pounds of weight
--simplifies the car a little bit more
--frees up maybe 0.3 horsepower of parasitic drag
--less material to get heat soaked

cons...
--since most of the weight of the AC is located along the bottom half of the car, the center of gravity is raised up maybe 1%

Bottom line, if it doesn't work very well, and you like ripping things apart when your bored.... remove it!

 

If you want to save weight, date skinnier chicks.

 

For fun, try it sometime!

If you search around a little more theres a thread on how to do this. What i remember of it though is that its not worth it to remove it simply because it makes up a VERY VERY small part of the heater system, and it only weighs 1-3 lb's if that. and you make possibly need to make some sort of blockoff plate for the heater system where the AC was mounted. (but im not so sure on the last part)

 

i think you need to ask what does it mean to you? if you live where it gets up to 90+ more than 2 weeks a year, keep the ****. if you live up north, the hell, who cres as long as the heat works. i live in the south, i love my AC, if i lived in wyoming, rip it out, enjoy the ease of replacing your spark plugs and having a tidy engine bay.. but i hvae removed mine before, and regretted it enough to buy another FC WITH AC.

 

~$7 for conversion fittings and then just put r134a in it. Yeah you're supposed to replace the drier and maybe some other things but you don't have to. I know people that have done this on other vehicles with no problems. I'm doing it on mine, but I had to replace some of the o-rings and haven't recharged it yet, so no long term test on it in my rx7 yet. When it did have some r134a in there, it worked fine for the few minutes it was ran.



And unless you're building an all out drag car, it's not worth removing it. I rarely use a/c and all so it's not a big deal to me, but it is to other people and the gains from removing it are little, not worth it on a non-race car. I removed the a/c on one of my other cars and wish I never did because now I have to sell a car w/ no a/c in south georgia (junked all the parts, compressor was bad).

 

If it EVER gets hot there, you'll hate not having it. If you took everything out like some people do, if it EVER gets cold, you'll hate it. If your windows EVER defrost, have fun clearing then up. Even just blowing air on them doesn't work well. It needs to be conditioned dry air. Everytime I see someone without an a/c I just enjoy mine a little more while I laugh at them. If your doesn't work, fix it! That also applies to the 6 port system, VDI, or any other system that people remove for no useful benefit.

 

who cares if u dont have ac to keep cool y do u think we have sunroofs and windows

 

Ok, I'm actually glad someone resurrected this thread, because I realized today that my A/C button was on, but no light. Its been cold here in Southern California for a couple weeks now, so no A/C usage. This is the first time I realized that its not working. And the R12... is that coolant for it?

And what the heck is a logicon?

 

You have windows so you can see out of the car! I don't know why anyone likes sunroofs. They lower the available headroom, add weight, and half the time on 2nd gens they never work anyways. How do you defrost your windows when it's raining? You need dry conditioned air to do it easily (not saying it's impossible without it. Just not easy at all) and cleaning them by hand is downright laughable!

I'm content having a fully working comfortable car that is still for all intents and purposes just as fast as the guy that took all that crap out. I have never seen anyone take that stuff out and have their car appreciably faster on the street.

 

Take the A/C off. I did when I did my TII swap and I am glad.

Yeah it gets hot (if you're a *****) but who cares. To me the fact that I can change my plugs in under 2 minutes is worth it anyday (with no knuckle busters!!) Getting the condenser out without taking the bumper off is fun, easier if the radiator is out, but still not easy.

And this is my DD summer car, my ZX2 with fully functioning A/C is my winter beater and I never drive it in the summer. (unless I bar hop..hehe.)

 

R12 is refrigerant. It's the stuff that makes the A/C cold. Refrigerant gets cold when it expands, and gets hot when it is compressed. Your A/C compressor compresses it, passes it through a "radiator" to dump the heat, then it decompresses basically by being forced through a pinhole, cools your car, then goes back to the compressor to start all over again. Now you know how A/Cs and refrigerators work.

Thieves like to use cans of refrigerant to supercool The Club, then they smash it with a hammer. R-12 is also known as Freon. Freon production is now banned for environmental reasons. But you can buy, sell and recycle it. Nowadays we use R-134a instead, since the short supply has skyrocketed the price of Freon. You must convert your A/C before filling it with R-134a, or your A/C will have a greatly shortened life span. I hear you can also use HC-12 in place of Freon, but you have to buy it in Canada.

The logicon is your heater/AC/vent controls and the electronics board behind those.

 

I don't really give a **** about this post..... but I vote that rotorman85 has the best avatar.

 

I have both A/C and P/S and can change the plugs in under ten minutes by feel alone. It's no big deal (unless you're a *****), and I use my A/C a lot more often than I change my plugs.

 

basically i think if your going to race turn it off, if your just driving turn it on. i dont really see the need unless your making an all out track only car and absolutely dont need it. if you have it enjoy it.

 

i can change my plugs in 3 min. with my AC in there. no knuckle busters or anything. i did it about 4 times in a row trying to do a comp test.

i live in washington. of course you people in houston or other hot places love your ac. i think its one of the most useless things in an FC.

it also rains a **** ton in washington. i have no problems clearing up my windows when it rains. just turn the air on. duh.

i threw comfort out of my can when i got my bucket seat + JIC coilovers. i can feel every damn bump in the road since the spring rate is so stiff + i have no padding on my chain. next is a roll cage.


if you want to take it out, then do it. if you want to keep it in, then keep it in. don't think you're some hot shot if you have yours in.




so how do you correctly vent your AC? i know i did mine wrong... whoops

 

I love it!

BTW, all you guys who take the a/c, emissions, p/s and mop off your cars: Please don't whine when you can't sell your car because no one wants to buy a hacked up vehicle.

And there is at least a thread a week by someone who has taken emissions or acv or something off his car and now it won't run right.

 

Atleast sombody else is noticing the amount of repeating threads..

 

I remove it.... it's not that big of a deal.

People forget not long ago a car with air conditioning was a luxury option, not an expectation... we still drove in heat, rain, and snow just fine and dandy.

It's definitely more of a pain in the *** to work on the car when it has both PS and AC, and if you're really concerned about the resale value of your 80's japanese pseudo-sports-car then fine go keep it pristine and stock.

Half the reason these cars are still appealing at all is they are dirt cheap and you can gut the hell out of them without batting an eye about the small monetary loss, making a reasonably light and rigid poor mans race car.

If you bought a 2nd gen rx-7 because it's your dream comfortable luxurious economical practical daily driver and was so expensive you're afraid about it's resale value, I'm truely sorry...

 

bro i am about to take my ace off i just not sure yet but bro this is what am thinking is for racing and all you have to do is put ur window down when ur hot and one more thing put tints on the car thats all so i will take my ace off just keep it so if you change ur mind about doing if but i say its worth it

also these engine are know for over heating so your radiator is getting more air you lose weight from your car and you get more space to work on your car and you increase horse power know am saying taking off the ace and powersteering you'll feel the differents beleive me by the way am selling my powersteering lol am outie

 

look at the good side you'll lose weight if your a little bit out of shape and i mean that less weight in your car lol

 

1. Stay cool in hot weather and get back 3-4 grand when I sell my car (www.kbb.com)
2. Save 50lbs., which is worth the same as 2-3HP. Save 5-10 minutes every time I have to change my spark plugs.
You know, I really don't need option 1. I'll take option 2.

This japanese pseudo-sports-car in S4 N/A form has the same performance numbers as a Civic Si or BMW 3 series. And I commute and take mine on trips of several hundred miles without worry. But hey, if you bought a beat up piece of garbage to rebuild as a project car, then sure, pull the A/C.

 

So what? You could say that about every feature added to cars in the last 120 years, including the the EFI and LCD screeen in your car. It's called progess...

 

Exactly. Back in the 20's, they had a little thing called the 'Ford Fracture'. Electric starters eliminated that little 'discomfort', but I'm sure that the Model T owners considered anything without a crank ***** cars...

Usually the Canucks calling ***** on a/c users. Go figure.

 

Keep telling yourself you continue daily driving your loaded up old FC due to "progress".

I don't daily drive my FC, it's a play car, I don't think it's a good choice for a daily driver by todays standards, regardless of what luxuries it has. To make the car more fun and capable, it needs to lose weight, so the AC and everything else that has nothing to do with driving the car gets pulled out.

Progress has brought us much better choices for daily drivers, which enables us to use these cheap old cars of yesterday as poor mans race cars. If you truly believed in progress you'd be driving a hybrid or something that at least got > 30MPG when simply traveling in an air conditioned cage.

Yes, what I'm saying is the FC is obsolete in terms of a daily driver.

So yes, I would reccomend everyone gut their FC and turn it into a track car, not only does it make the car a whole hell of a alot more fun to drive when you're actually _driving_ it, not sitting in traffic... It hopefully keeps it off the road daily, which for everyone, is a good thing.

Get something better for sitting in traffic or getting groceries (hybrid, motorcycle?), let the FC sit in the garage until you're ready to utilize it those few times a month, which in its gutted race-prepped form will be far more rewarding.

If you can't afford to do something like that, you probably in reality cannot afford the FC as a daily driver either, do some math on your gas expenses and maintenance costs and you'll probably see you should stop driving the car.

 

my daily driver is a hoodride 62 beetle... no ac, no carpet, no radiator, no airbag, no fm radio(AM radio only) no suspension(slammed), no power windows, no power locks, no seatbelts, no more padding on seats, and no reliability... but i do have some kick *** dice that hang from the mirror. And i still have the fc parked most the time..... so there!!

ps
i dont know who this is directed to but i feel real hardcore right now lol