Almost done with all of the plumbing on the Vintage Air install now. I'm only waiting on one hardline to bend up as a replacement for the drier > evaporator line. I tried ordering couplers to overcome the drier fitting conundrum, but ORB (which I ordered erroneously) is completely different than O-Ring Pilot (which I really needed, but they don't exist in this style), so I came up with another solution for that. I'll take a picture of it when it's in place.
At the beginning of the week I cut all of the flexible hoses to length and marked their orientations together with the fittings.
Then I had to find someone close by who could crimp them correctly. I visited four different businesses that were only equipped to crimp hydraulic hose, but at the last one they led me to a local diesel repair shop. Probably the only place in this town of population 29,000 with an ATCO 3710 beadlock crimper. $21.21 later and I was on my merry way, glad to have found someone close to home to do it for me.
Here is the passenger side of the engine bay again, this time with the lines all in place and tightened down with properly oiled o-rings.
I plan to eventually secure all four of those hoses to the inner fender with a bracket of some sort. I had also taken the liberty of block sanding the firewall flat again with some 220 grit and then brushing on another layer of POR-15. It came out much smoother than before (it had looked horrible, I hid it by angling the camera and keeping the area in shadow), but still with a little bumpiness which I attribute to the strong winds that day.
Here's a shot of the 90° fittings on the compressor which should make it much easier to get at the service ports compared to those 135° fittings that came with the hose kit. I'll probably have to turn that plastic wire holder on the left 180° around though. That'd make it easier to connect to the lower service port.
Here's another small project I've been working on, getting the spark plug wire holders I ordered to play nice with my motor. I've heard of the term “bolt on” but in my experience it seems more like a theory than a fact.
They are R&M Specialties 1102K billet wire looms made specifically for the big block Chevy. Unfortunately, I couldn't just bolt them down because they didn't clear the firewall on either side, so I had to make my own adapter plates to move them forward enough to clear. I didn't want to modify the brackets themselves because they're aluminum (I don't have the equipment to weld aluminum) and they're anodized black (ditto on lack of equipment here too). So instead I broke out the chop saw, drill press and welder. All they need now are some nuts and lockwashers then a little black paint and they'll be hardly noticeable.
Oh, I did get a service manual supplement in the mail this week, but they sent me the wrong one. The correct fuel & emissions supplement is now on it's way.