msmith

A little project I've been playing with for the last few months:

The previous owner of my 66 convertible installed a Classic Auto Air "Daily Driver" underdash A/C system. Being in Florida, this is certainly a welcome modification from a comfort standpoint, but it leaves a lot to be desired from a visual standpoint in my Ivy Gold / White Luxury interior.



The good points about this A/C unit are several:
It cools pretty darn well
It uses a modern Sanden type compressor and R134A
It's narrower and overall less bulky than an original Ford under dash A/C.

The bad points are:
The black plastic bezel just looks wrong in the car

So, I pondered what to do and went and bought a scrapped original unit to see if an original bezel could be made to fit this new unit... Simple answer is "No, not even close". But I did salvage the original Ford ***** and Ford Crest from the old unit and then resold the remaining parts.

Next I played with the idea of plating or painting the plastic part with chrome finish, but the part is grained and would have required a lot of prep work, and painting ABS plastic is not easy and it would have probably flaked and looked like crap and pissed me off.

Then I talked it over with a couple of my buddies and explained how much pain I was in staring at that ugly black thing, and they offered to help me out. The great part is that my three buddies are a Solidworks specialist, a machinist and a very talented fabricator.

After a few minutes of heated discussion, they said %*$& it, we'll hog it out of billet... and that's exactly what they did. First, the Solidworks guy measured and made a model of the plastic part, adjusting it for the material and machining.

Then the machinist transferred the Solidworks model to MasterCam and went to work (starting with a solid billet), milling this bad boy in one piece.

]

Test fit. It fit perfectly the first time... then it was off to the plating shop for a really nice triple-chrome plating job.



We then trimmed a glove box woodgrain decal and used the factory ***** and Ford Crest to finish it off.



Close up:



I think I owe those guys a lot of beers.

If you look at a 66 with a Luxury Interior, Console and A/C, the console has black camera grain finish to match the A/C unit (which only came in black), and the instrument bezel and glovebox door have the wood finish. This is due to the fact that the A/C unit has a concave front surface that would be impossible to apply a flat decal onto. Another detail is that the larger Ford A/C unit requires that the console be cut down and capped before it curves up. With the smaller aftermarket A/C unit, the console has a little upward sweep which I think looks nice. Overall, I think the end result is cleaner than factory, but I'm biased.

To answer a likely question ahead of time, the cost of duplicating this part would be very high... there is a ton of machining time involved and these guys don't work cheap... this was definitely a major favor, for which I'm very thankful.

tcrote5516

Holy Shizzzzzzz that's an insane amount of work for a detail!!!! I'd say it was well worth the effort, that came out and looks amazing.

Who said you cant improve on a masterpiece?

hightower2011

Definitely looks much better, and I too like it better than an original FoMoCo unit. Very great job by you and your buddies!

andrewmp6

It looks a lot better and most will never know its not factory.

tx65coupe

That looks much better. I wonder why they dont offer something like that.

I had considered one of their kits, but decided to make a hybrid of a refurbished underdash unit but upgraded everything under the hood. I really like to original AC bezel.

andrewmp6

There is kits to upgrade the compressor so you could keep the rest stock.

TexasAxMan

Looks amazing, you should start with buying those guys a keg. You should think about painting the case to match your console, also.

JMD

That came out really nice, extraordinary detail and finish, great work!