aaronsbiza said:
How do I remove the front hub? Do I need to pull the condessor to adjust the gap? How do I check the gap? Can I just purchase the entire pully with clutch and hub and bolt it in?
You can buy a field coil/compressor clutch/pulley/bearing kit from autozone, a brand new part...not rebuilt (the rebuilt costs MORE from autozone, lol!!!
) for about $85. Believe it or not if you just try to buy the clutch without the field coil or vice versa you won't really save (most $10. You will pay MORE if you buy from a more expensive store like NAPA). The kit I described is a normal stock item for autozone. Unlike NAPA your local autozone WILL have one in stock unless a fellow SHO owner just bought the unit off the shelf and the supply truck hasn't replaced the store's stock yet.
Do yourself a favor if you decide to go this route: FORGET the cheap $10 snap ring pliars. You will have hours of grief and possibly no success and I don't care HOW POOR you are the savings will NOT be worth it. Buy a quality set of snapring pliars that can handle a 2" external snapring. Because the field coil is retained by, yup, a 2" external snapring. I paid $31 at NAPA for a KD tools KD-3151 (NAPA part number 3151) "Super-Duty Large" pair of convertible snap ring pliars (convertible means one pair does both internal and external snaprings. That would cost you $16 for a pair of cheap crap internal and external individual $8 "**** bringer" snapring pliars at the local discount auto store). The same KD-3151 pliars can be had from discount online vendors for $20 + shipping. I say go for the NAPA convenience. Plus they're NAPA labeled which make a lifetime warranty exchange easy, just scoot on down to your local NAPA.
The field coil snapring is a bit tricky. It took me about 3 minutes to install with my nice KD tools pliars. It took me about 5 hours to REMOVE using cheap snapring pliars to weaken the snapring and a pair of screwdrivers to finish the job. I couldn't even get the snapring installed with the cheap pliars. After hours went to NAPA, got the real deal. 3 minutes of trickery. Bam. Installed. Plus I got nice pliars that will last forever now and can handle up to 2" rings no problems. The cheapies, also lifetime warranted I might add
, broke. And that's after only a few uses. Then I fixed them. Then they broke again. Then I fixed 'em better. Then I found out that even fully functional they just weren't up to the task. Hence the many hours of grief. Hence the justifiable label of "**** Bringers" that now goes on those **** pliars.
You can read about my ordeal here:
http://shoforum.com/showthread.php?t=32822&highlight=field+KD
You might also have a bad compressor and that's where the noise is coming from. In my case I didn't have noise. Just no AC: a low charge and a worn clutch and a dying field coil that didn't like the heat.
One more bit of advice. Listen to EVERYTHING rangerj tells you about AC. He knows his poo. Rob94 knows a thing or two about AC also. He has been through the whole AC ordeal and has given some thought to each piece that he paid dear money for. I say you can listen to about 98% of what he has to say. Isn't that right Rob?
