Air con

[tomVR6storm 0]

Is it possible to retro fit air con to VR6 and does anyone know of companies who do this sort of work.

[delfinis38 1]

air-con was never standard or an optional extra on a rado. my was fitted by a porsche dealer after purchase.

 

the rado had a devine (sp) air con fitted

[Supercharged 2]

Welcome to the forum!

 

It was a factory fit option in Europe and the US, dealer fit over here.

 

A few people have done installs and also climatronic conversions but it is a huge amount of work that requires numerous parts unfortunately - that said i'm sure the people that have doe it will say it was well worth it!!

[tonedef 8]

...............that said i'm sure the people that have doe it will say it was well worth it!!

Obviously, you're not gonna do all that work and the say it was wasted time!

[Supercharged 2]

Hehe - what and then living in Saudi and leaving the Corrado garaged in the UK? :)

 

Could you point a link to your thread Mr Def?

[Benk 0]

Mine was dealer fitted according to the original sales receipt, never knew it wasn't an optional extra. Seems odd considering the corrado's contemparies.

[tonedef 8]

Hehe - what and then living in Saudi and leaving the Corrado garaged in the UK? :)

 

Could you point a link to your thread Mr Def?

Sorry guys, been a bit busy flying back from Saudi and drinking a large amount of Guinness and eating vast quantities of pork, however..............................

 

I tried to find the definitive "don't try this at home thread", but the closest I could find was a PM describing an install, hope this makes sense, if not, I should be sober by around 5th January and I can try again!

 

Cheers,

Tony

I never planned to do a climatronic install, it was all a big accident really. The Corrado was off the road as I had bought an

S3 but was working in Singapore so my wife was using that. When I returned to UK I did't have a new contract to start straight

away so decided to have the wheels refurbed and bumpers painted before possibly selling the Corrado as we'd owned this one

since 2000 and bought our original 16V in 1996 so it was time for a change. One day while the car was on axle stands waiting

for wheels to return I started the engine and realised the cam chain rattle was not going to get better so figured I should fix

those at the same time. Around this time I found the Corrado forum and saw that bigpants was selling a Climatronic install,

there was no plan, I bought it without a second thought as I loved the system in the S3. Also unless you're pretty confident

with stuff like this it's not for the faint hearted, I'm an engineer working in control systems but a couple of years ago my

contract on a job finished and I went to help a friend in a rally team for a few weeks but stayed for a couple of years. We

built and ran Group N Evos for Ralliart, effectiveley the works team and the team that won the 2007 British championship, I

have no fear of taking cars to pieces and modifying them! The end result was well worth it mind.

 

 

Climatronic replaces both the fan and air conditioning controls giving you automatic temperature control. Basically you set the

system to the temperature you want, say 21 degress and it heats/cools as required to maintain this setting, it is not simply a

replacement of the heater control.

All the parts for mine came from a 96 Passat VR6 and therefore the design is very simiar to that of the Corrado, it is however

quite a large complex install needing the following parts and modifications to fit:

 

The condensor has to be fitted in front of the radiator, the one from the Passat was very large and required a lot of

modifications in the slam panel plus the radiator had to be moved back towards the engine for space. I have a Schrick inlet

which is larger than the standard one and now have approx 2mm between radiator and inlet manifold at the closest point so I

fitted a VT front mount to stop the engine moving so much and causing contact there. Modern condensors are much smaller and

would be a much easier item to fit however pipe connections may not be the same so new pipes would have to be fabricated as

required. The canister that goes with the condensor (I believe it's called the receiver drier) had to be fitted where the

standard carbon canister lives below the airbox, I junked the carbon canister!

 

The compressor fitted directly to the existing bracket, a longer serpentine belt has to be used though.

 

Piping layout was very close to the original and fitted with only maybe a half day's work.

 

The evaporator/heater box has to be fitted in place of the original heater box behind the dash. This is much larger than the

original and takes up most of the spare space behind the dash. My glovebox is now approx 2/3 it's original depth and the lower

shelf on the passenger side is only maybe 20mm deep. All heating ducts did however line up correctly and the holes for bolting

the box to the bulkhead were in the correct positions, one extra bolt hole had to be drilled plus a large hole cut for the

piping to go through. The duct for the dash centre vent (above the radio) has an extra automatic control flap which had to be

grafted into the existing ducting as the Passat one was different.

 

The control panel was slightly larger than the orignal heater panel but was easy to cut down to match the dash and the box it

fits to slotted into the dash in place of the original heater control even picking up the exisiting fixing points.

 

All automatic flaps in the system are controlled by vacuum and a tank has to be fitted some place. I fitted it behind the arch

liner on the passenger side where the horns live, the horns had to be moved slightly to squeeze everything in. This tank then

is connected to a vacuum port on the brake servo piping.

 

Electrics. Best 'til last! The electrics were initially a nightmare as I could only figure out some of the wiring, I eventually

borrowed a copy of the Passat wiring manual from a friend at the local dealer, without it I would possibly still be there.

There are a number of extra sensors in the engine bay, extra water temp, extra outside temp and air con system pressure. There

are four or five extra wires go into the fan controller (you must have the later fan controller which was not fitted to all

Corrados) as this also controls the compressor clutch. Inside the car there is a fair amount of extra wiring goes into the

relay plate, ECU loom, lighting circuit, diagnostic port etc. Also there's a couple of extra sensors to go in the cabin, a

sunlight sensor on the dash top (I cut mine into the small grill in the centre looks like a speaker but is not) and a cabin

temp sensor sticks through a small hole in the front of the dash.

 

Vagcom is required as there will be lots of errors to trace and clear once it's all fitted.

[_leon_ 0]

anybody using the forum nowadays fitted the same climatronic system as described above? install for the diavia system looks straight forward with some effort as andy brookes described viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24242 but interested in the later (and potentially better) system.