in order to have a decent breather set up i am gonna need a new breather, prob go for pro alloy. stage 3 engine.

as i have air con and my engine bay looks like this (not actually mine but similar)



will i need a mirror image tank as with the air con pipes theres very little room for a seperator near the battery.

OR

should i junk the air con, get a seperator, and an RS500 spec intercooler, as the air con rad does block the normal rad and the engine runs hot.

note: my air con DOES work and is nice on hot summer days

any advice guys

rory

 

Just junk it and open a window and dont work your engine so hard. If you can, deffo go for the rs500 i/c I think they are worth there weight in gold. oil seperator is also a very good idea

 

If it was me i'd ditch the air con m8 and get a 500 cooler,the air con will be sapping power off your engine too.

 

is this true?

 

Mirror tank won't fit in if you have original air box in place.

 

when its turned on i seem to recall that the aircom sapps about 5 - 10 bhp. even when its off because of the pulleys etc its still draining some power.

i wouldnt get rid of mine though as its worth its weight in gold in this weather, especially if you've leather seats

 

i'd never get rid of the air con, unless it was a proper track car, and even then it's worth it to keep cool with the windows closed
anyway, there is a relay that turns it off when you hit wide open throttle so you don't need to ditch it other than for fitting the RS500 cooler
ditch the fan on the front and fit a bigger cooler there

 

dojj quite right. except the fan bit. if you don't have a massive electric fan putting air through the a/c condenser, the pressure will rise very high making the compreesor use more power and for the system to work very ineeficiently. the heat that you take out of the cabin air has to go out of there

the compressor has an electromagnetic clutch so it doesn't use any power when switched off (except from a fraction of 1 hp to turn the freewheeling pulley with the belt). trust me on this, i've worked for an aircon compressor manufacturer for over 10 years

 

from what i've seen on the sierra/granada AC stuff the front fan is very rarely operational
but it's a fair point about the fan because it's there to cool down the regrigerant in the system when it gets too hot

 

it should be operational in low speed mode as soon as the a/c is switched on, and then go to high speed above a certain pressure (usually about 18 bar absolute)

it's nothing to do with temperature of the refrigerant. it changes the pressure at which the refrigerant condenses (which happens at a constant temperature) i run a climatic wind tunnel testing automotive air conditioning day in and day out, so i know my shit on this one

 

i've had air con on my sierra/granadas for the past 8 years
i've never seen the fans spinning in all that time, even the ones that aren't siezed at least 3 of them wern't and they wern't sized either
not that i'm siang they don't, i'm just saying i have't had one thats come on

i've seen them spinning on bmw's and rollers though,s o perhaps they should

 

This is how they should look with the aircon.

 

where does that brether pipe go to....around the front of the engine bay then dissapears off behind the air filter, mine stops above the throttle so spits oil out everywhere from this point

 

that pipe should go into the air filter, but sends oil into the air flow ,so people disconnect it rather than using a proper oil seperator

 

thats what happens with mine and hence why i have such an oily engine bay

pro-alloy mirror image breather on its way very soon

 

aslong as you havent got the standard air box mate???

 

no air box, just a cone filter

current set up breathes the flame trap, to little filter above the throttle and throws oil EVERYWHERE

ideally would buy a normal seperator but no room due to the air con

 

you may be able to squeze a normall one in there somewhere, make a braket and mount it off the battery tray, but the mirror image is the best option, get a fitting kit too so you get all the atachments to the block and r/c