A couple years ago I set out to get working Air Conditioning in one of my AE86s, and it was further fueled by driving my AE86 drift car on Drift Week. No heat and no AC was miserable for a street car. The hardest part about adding AC to your AE86 is finding all of the parts.
Back in the earlier days of cars, air conditioning systems were installed at the dealer, not at the plant that built the vehicles. This is true for Toyota! While I don’t know if this applies to the AE86, I know it applies to some other Toyotas right around this time frame. This is great because it makes the install really straight forward, but at the same time it also makes sourcing replacement parts for AE86s.
All of the AC lines are discontinued, the evaporator case is discontinued, and now it looks like the evaporator and condenser are also discontinued.
Regardless here is a parts list of things that you should be able to buy still:
- Condenser – 477-0142 (Denso)
- Evaporator – 476-0077 (Denso)
- Receiver Drier – 478-0100 (Denso)
A list of all of the parts needed:
- Compressor (possibly also need the compressor bracket)
- Evaporator
- Evaporator Case w/ A/C amplifier
- AC idle up solenoid
- AC idle up relay
- Condenser
- Condenser mount bushings
- Receiver Drier
- Receiver Drier bracket
- High pressure lines:
- Evaporator high pressure
- Engine Bay to front body
- Front body to receiver drier
- Receiver drier to condenser
- Condenser to engine bay
- Engine bay to Compressor (soft line)
- Low pressure lines:
- Evaporator low pressure
- Engine bay to front body
- front body to compressor (this may be 2 separate lines, they were always damaged on the cars I found so I wasn’t sure)
In general, low pressure lines are larger in diameter and high pressure lines are smaller in diameter.
Compressor Wiring
In the engine bay near the battery harness, you should see a black wire with white tracer (possibly with red dots along it), that ends with a 1 terminal connector. This is for the A/C compressor. Plug it in to the compressor once you have it bolted to the engine.
R12 to R134A Conversion
The AE86 originally came with R12 in the AC system, and R12 is no longer available. Luckily, R134A is readily available currently, and the retrofit fittings can be easily purchased for 20 or less from most auto parts stores. This is only part of the conversion though. A lot of people will complain that R134A doesn’t cool as well as R12, and I personally think that is usually due to an incomplete or improper conversion.
R12 refrigerant and R134A use different oil types, and they are not exactly compatible with one another. You’ll need to flush out the entire AC system for the AE86 to make sure to remove all of the old R12 oil and replace every o-ring with an R134A compatible o-ring – as well as install new schrader valves (if the conversion fittings don’t come with them), as well as flush the AC compressor. Toyota has a nifty guide for parts, specs, etc for this conversion.
What about BEAMS (or other) swapped cars? BEAMS AE86 with AC!
For BEAMS swapped cars, it’s honestly really easy to get working once you have all of the factory AE86 parts. The only thing you’ll need to do additional is some wiring and build some new conversion lines.
BEAMS Compressor Wiring
The BEAMS compressor has a 3 wire connector on it. 2 of the wires go to a sensor (likely a pressure sensor) internal to the compressor, and the 3rd wire is for the A/C clutch. You’ll need to separate this from the 3 wire connector and add on a separate connector.
On the chassis side, you’ll take that black and white tracer wire for the A/C compressor and add a tee/splice – one wire will go to the connector for the A/C compressor clutch, and the other wire will go to your standalone ECU. You’ll setup that wire as an input to the ECU and have it trigger the cooling fans and idle speed increase when it sees the 12V signal for the A/C clutch.
Inside of the car, you’ll need to add a tachometer signal to the A/C Amplifier. The A/C amplifier will use this to engage/disengage the A/C compressor when the engine is off/on, and possibly at certain RPMs. There is a black wire coming out of the A/C amplifier harness – that is for the tachometer signal. The A/C amplifier will need a stock style tachometer signal, which is the high voltage (48v) signal that the stock cluster needs to see. I was able to use a Dakota Digital Tachometer box to feed a tacho signal from my Link ECU to both the AE86 cluster (digital in my case), as well as the A/C amplifier and it worked great.
Adapter Lines and Fittings
Luckily A/C lines are fairly standardized. You’ll need #8 and #10 lines and fittings. I went with 1x straight #8 steel crimp fitting, 1x straight #10 steel crimp fitting, 1x 45° #8 aluminum fitting, 1x 45° #10 fitting, 13.25″ #8 soft line, 29″ #10 soft line, and these A/C compressor adapter fittings.
The 45° fittings are for the A/C compressor, and the straight fittings are for the AE86 hard line connections. The A/C lines will end up in kind of a U shape like the original A/C compressor lines.
Oil and Refrigerant Specs?
I went with ~120mL of PAG46 oil, and charged it up with the same amount of freon as referenced in the table above. The Altezza can use up to 150mL of oil, but the rest of the AE86 A/C system is smaller so I didn’t feel like 150mL was the right amount of oil. We’ll see long term how this lasts – the AE86 system with 4AGE compressor only uses 100mL of oil!
For refrigerant charge – I used the document above and used the same refrigerant charge as the original 4AG setup.
Serpentine Belt
There are a few people who have made belt tensioners, however, I opted to go with a Stretch Belt – part number K040296SF. This way no tensioner is needed. The belt was ~$30 and the install/removal tool was also ~$30.
…. with all of that connected, filled up, charged up, and ECU enabled… hit that A/C button and enjoy your somewhat cold A/C in your 35+ year old car!