We've been looking around for the wife another car, she likes 40-48 Tudor sedans. Ran into a few that looked promising, but the big turn off to her was no A/C. Ones with A/C were high dollar street rods, most of the ones without were mostly stock looking flatheads. Spotted a nice 41 on CL, but all original car with a flatty, and I don't have time or money to go into another full blown project while my car is still down. We can live with the flatty, but not without A/C. I know it's not exactly traditional, but with the hood down, nobody will notice much. So flathead experts, can you put a A/C compressor on a flathead? Not afraid of fabbing brackets, just don't really see a good place to mount one.
You can use a small compressor off a small four cylinder and make your own mounting brackets. Their is after market systems out that have every thing in a kit. Like grandpa would tell me if their is a will their is a way, good luck.
I got one under slung below an engine mount attached to my Cadillac flathead. A little tricky with these engines as there are few bolt on points. I have not run the car yet but so far all the mounts and belts seem to have worked out OK. The Cadillac flathead will be producing around 150HP, which seems sufficient and my vehicle don't weigh as much as a Cadillac.
Those Alan Grove brackets look like they would work. I was trying to figure out in my head where you'd mount a compressor, didn't really think about up top like that, looks a little busy, but to keep Mama happy it'd be OK. I'll have to check into that 'lectric deal too. May be a while, if ever, anyway. She has three vehicles picked out to go look at, in three different directions, about the same distance, far enough apart it would be hard to look at two of them real good in a days time. And with other stuff going on, scheduling time to go is tight. Just have to see what happens. Thanks for the replies. EDIT: Just done a little research on the electric units. From the little I read, no dice on retrofitting something like that at the current time. They run off the high voltage battery pack, something not feasible to be swapping out into our old rides.
I added Vintage Air to my '37 truck this summer. I run a 250 inline six that on a good day makes 125 hp. While driving, I can't tell when the compressor kicks on and off. At idle the engine slows just a bit with the compressor running, but not enough to mess with the idle screws. Your flat head should have no problem running a modern compressor. I bought a real Sanden compressor, not the ( just like ) models. I also run a small 55 amp alternator.
A quick search shows this Vintage air bracket that will fit a 40 Ford Deluxe with flathead. You would wan to make sure your flatty runs cool enough without the condenser in front of your radiator before installing the entire system.
To me the compressor doesn't care what's turning it. I'd make sure to get the most effiency one I could. No Chinese replicas either. Cooling system would need to be in great condition number 1...
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