Air Conditioning in an ice chest???

I saw a guy selling ice chests that were converted to AC. Fill with ice, they had a blower motor that plugged into the cigarette lighter, and cold air for about 4 hours from the back seat of ANY car. Price-$75. Anyone see this anywhere? Anyone got plans? I thought it was pretty cool, but it was in the middle of winter so i didn't buy one.

 

I bought one at WalMart . I suppose you could use it to cool your car

 

Sounds easy to build your own.

Most computer fans are 12 volts and there are LOTS of dead ones lying about. All you need is an ice chest some grills and some fans, and a cord to plug them in.

Great idea!!
Glenn

 

Aren't most computer fans 120 Volt AC???---Ya might need a real long extension cord----

 

i bet dry ice would extend the process significantly for longer trips or weekenders.

 

Nope. The run off the 12V DC power supply that feeds the computer in most all computers except the VERY VERY early ones.

 

cool.

 

they had these as accessory coolers way back when. a big round tube that fit perfectly in the back windo of a model A two door sedan. blew cool air in while driving

 

plus the "smoke machine" effect would be bad ***.

 

like this?

 

My car is so cool it don't need no air conditioner

 

You can do the window swamp cooler thing (with or with out an electric fan) but it doesn't look right on all vehicles. It's friggen hot in So Cal and I like the idea of some contraption that I can put in the back seat that will cool the car down a bit. More tech on this Igloo cooler deal.

 

exactly!

 

or, if you don't have a cashed computer floating around, you can pick up the fans at Radio Shack. They call them muffin fans. I ran a couple back in my car audio days...

 

put it in a vingtage thermachest or *************, with a small gell cell battery, and you have self contained vintage faux-cool. -er...

 

I can see it now...."Vintage Air"....portable unit....are you listening Jack?
I ran one of the swamp cooler types on my 5w one summer, worked well when filled with ice.....then Jack(from above) gave me the prototype of his small unit that got put into that car....after 25 years, one of the best things I ever did to that car!...and no, the 3w isn't getting one!
Skot

 

look up "Swamp Air" and you'll see the window units all over the place. very common in the old days but typically worked better in lower humidity locations.

 

Most are 12V, some are 6V

I can't imagine the **** actually cooling it off much if any at all.

 

Let me tell you from personal experience (trying to cool a boat) that in a car, with heat, on hot pavement . . . it's going to be like ******* into a tornado. I was building a 5K BTU room air conditioner into a portable unit to cool a 26 foot cabin cruiser . . . ended up with two 4 inch hoses extracting hot air . . . still didn't get close to cooling what I wanted. I ended up with a
8K BTU room air conditioner mounted on the hatch.

From a previous post I did on garagejournal.com:

How many BTU do you think a car unit is???? (A quick search on google: "The average car AC is rated about 1 ton (12000 BTUs) but that, of course, is not a constant output due to the variances in engine speed.")

Another fun read . . . how much ice to cool your house in summer: http://home.howstuffworks.com/question306.htm

 

Its hot as hell right now. Im so thankful I have a black truck.

 

try having a black car with a really big chop so no air even comes in

if you see me on the side of the road with a heat stroke just throw some water on me

im about to strap on my window air conditioner whether it looks like **** or not on my car

 

bttt

 

I own an investigation firm in Los Angeles. One of our primary services is surveillance. We run a crew of surveillance operatives throughout the world. But primarily in CA. Including the many desert areas. Temps inside a car can easily run in excess of 200 degrees. So you might understand our motivation in designing such a unit.

I have built, researched, tested and modified (along with several of my contemporaries) every conceivable cooling unit you could imagine. From simple coolers with fans to radiator units with water pumps.

If your life depends on it go buy one of these http://www.swampy.net/. If not, the amount of time it takes to modify a cooler with a fan, a battery and some ice is minimal. However, the amount of ice needed to even drop the temp 5 to 10 degrees is prohibitive. A unit such as your suggesting really will provide nothing more than a cool breeze in your face. Until the ice melts. And you'll need at least 2 additional coolers full of ice to resupply the thing for any realistic amount of time. A wet rag from your coolers ice - d****d over your head - with the wind blowing over it - will keep you cooler.

*********DO NOT USE DRY ICE IN AN ENCLOSED VEHICLE*********

It will kill you. If you build such a unit, roll up the windows, and start pumping air thru a cooler of dry ice - you won't for very long.

If you need air conditioning that bad go buy a professional unit. This is a huge waste of time, effort, money and a pain to deal with three coolers of ice for a minimal amount of cooling.

But if you must - buy a 40 gallon cooler, two cheap 4 to 6 inch dc fan, a cigerette lighter power plug with pigtails. Cut a hole in the cooler for each fan (one intake one exhaust), screw and glue the fans in place, solder and shrink tube the fan to the cig adapter and your good to go. Block ice is the only way to go. Cube or crush will melt to fast and does not add a significant temp reduction.

Don't mean to sound negative. But I've wasted a ton of time and money on this idea. The swampy is the only way to go and that's only if your life depends on it. Some surveillance van companies have perfected swamp coolers but they are based on a really large format with tons of ice.

49Lincoln

 

just before my brother-in-law died he and I went to a MAFCA model A Ford meet in M***.there was one older restored A sedan with a small house air conditioner in a plywood panel in the rear p***engers window hooked to a small gas generator on a rear luggage rack!bet that house unit could frost the windows in august !

 

Like 49Lincoln said, dry ice in an enclosed area will mess you up!

My Dad used to have a floor mounted cooler for his car. He bought it from Sears (Allstate product) in the 60's. It sat under the dash over the ****** hump, had four adjustable legs to level it, plugged into the lighter, and he filled the back of the thing with ice. There were two directional vents on the front, and a two speed fan to blow air over the ice, than out at you. The front also had a lift up lid for the beverage cooling area, and the top doubled as a junk tray. I still see them on Ebay regularly.

 

Kinda OT. A while back while working at a dealership I took a complete unit from a wrecked minivan and mounted it on a wood shell and had two air houses run off of it so while under the a car on a lift I could get a cool breeze(and share a hose with the guy in the bay next to me). The only problem was we kept burning up electric motors when the clutch would disengage on the compressor. Lasted a week or so at a time.

 

Found the thing your talking about $40.00 plus shipping. KOOLERAIRE http://www.kooleraire.com/

 

The MAJOR function of any 'air conditioning unit" is DEHUMIDIFICATION ..... The 'swamp coolers" ( EVAPORATIVE COOLER actually) rely on a VERY LOW humidity environment to function properly ( desert type conditions) ... with a box full of ice and a fan you basically have a HUMIDIFIER ...something that ADDS humidity .... the opposite of what you really want in a hot, WET climate ( that's where you would want to cool the vehicle anyway). And yes...dry ice in an enclosed space will get you no more than meeting your great-great-grandparents in the hereafter .....

jersey skip

 

I don't remember having A/C or even a cooler in a car in the 50s and 60s in So-Cal and I seem to be still here. Having said that I sure would have had one had I the money at the time. Those MK-IV A/C add-ons come to mind.