Preparing A Tiger To Live In The Arizona Desert
By Cullen Bennett
B9472658
September 15, 1999
Part Four; "Air Conditioning for the Tiger"
Air conditioning in the Arizona desert is a necessity and not really a luxury. Once all of the radiator, fan and shroud issues had been resolved, I wanted more. In fact, I was feeling really confident at this point. A lot of people said that Tigers were made to overheat and mine had done just that in a very repeatable manner. But that problem had been resolved in a very methodical, but costly, manner. I felt that just about any problem can be resolved with a detailed analysis of the situation ( and available money). Several people had previously put air conditioning into their Tigers and had to also deal with the additional heat being dumped out by the condenser coil. I have heard of coils being mounted under the car, in the trunk area and inside the fender wells in order to catch a breath of cool air without stressing the radiator. Since my radiator appeared to work so well, I decided to go with a head-on approach just like the auto manufacturers chose. After careful measuring to see just what size condenser coil would fit out in front of the radiator, I went out on a fact finding mission. As it turned out the condenser from an RX-7 was a perfect fit. I theorized that since it was a small car of similar size to the Tiger the coil size should be adequate to cool the interior volume. The compressor used with this system was a Sankyo 508
which has an extremely good history for reliability. I believe that it has 5 interior pistons to pump the Freon around. Another wonderful sidelight was that the 508 is almost identical in size to the DC generator used in the Tiger. Hmmm, I know where the compressor is going to reside. Due to the need for generating some additional electrical power to feed to the compressor clutch and the additional interior fan, I decided to replace the alternator with a modern alternator. I also just happened to have a Delco 65 Amp alternator with internal regulator sitting on the garage shelf just waiting for the opportunity to get back into service. The question was 'where to mount it'. With the compressor occupying the space where the generator used to be, that only left the other side of the engine. That side was currently being used by the oil filter assembly. Faced with this delimma there was only one obvious solution, to go for broke and do a major shift of several components. But this meant taking some of the "original" Tiger parts and put them carefully away in a box so that they could be recalled someday if needed (for whatever reason). Basic packrat motto, "never throw anything away". So, as a result, the oil filter was taken off and an outboard filter mount was bolted onto the frame behind the driver side wheel and high enough as to not cause a clearance problem (it actually makes it easier to change the filter now). I chose to connect the filter up with high pressure braided stainless steel lines.
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