One request I’ve been getting lately is getting air conditioning working on a vintage Ferrari. When I was first getting into cars, any car collector car that came originally with air conditioning would eventually need service, but sometimes refilling the system with refrigerant wouldn’t last long. Eventually, refilling the system would not solve the problem (and we realized was bad for the environment!), so we gave up and drove our cars without air conditioning. Maybe the climate was cooler, maybe we were used to not having A/C, or maybe we’ve gotten used to our modern cars with reliable and efficient air conditioning, but today my clients demand a working A/C! I have always declined working on these systems because I didn’t have the necessary equipment or skills to work on them. I usually took the car to my local garage and had them work on them, but sometimes leaving a valuable six figure plus car at a shop for A/C work made me uncomfortable. I realized I needed to step up my skills and services.

Many times the Vintage Ferrari systems were American made systems from the era that were fitted to these cars. The technology was from the 60s and the components were the same age. Not only were these systems leaking from the old fittings, but probably leaking through the 50 year old hoses. I felt the only way to make a reliable system was to replace much of the old components with new parts, and change over to a modern refrigerant. R12 was banned from use in automobiles because of its environmental issues, but after 30 years, it seems to be making a comeback. 134a, which has its own issues, was its replacement, and most shops are capable of working with 134a and its fittings, so I’ve decided to work with a 134a system.

To guide me through this process on this Dino, I called Scott McClure, a Dino owner that has worked on his air conditioning system extensively, and had the tricks and knowledge to fix the system in the one I was working on. He had the evaporator for the Dino reproduced exactly and will supply one to me for this project.

The first step was to remove all the old refrigerant hoses running from the compressor to the front of the car. Even for a low mileage car, these hoses were still over 50 years old, so we will be replacing them with modern A/C barrier hoses that will do a better job at keeping the refrigerant contained. From my understanding, the 134a is a smaller molecule than the R12, so using modern hose designed for 134a will help. I am also going to upgrade the fittings to a modern o-ring seal from the old flare fittings on the original system. I don’t believe there is any solution to fixing an aging leaking flare fitting without simply cranking down on the fitting. The fitting will either seal or break, but the o-ring seal should be a better solution with o-ring replacements to repair a leaky fitting.

Replacing the hoses and fittings means replacing the other components of the system with the same fittings, which means the evaporator under the dash had to come out. Luckily, with the Dino, it was relatively accessible. We used to explain to certain owners who had a bad evaporator under their dash that when the A/C system was designed by Ferrari, they started with the evaporator and built the car around it! Luckily, this was not the case with the Dino, so getting the evaporator out was not too bad.

I managed to pull the evaporator out of its home for the last 50 years, and waited the new parts to arrive!