Retrofitting Aircon

Almost every modern car comes equipped with air-conditioning these days; a feature that you take for granted, until you step into an E30 and realise it's not there. To help you cool your sweaty brow, here's how to get your chill on in an E30.

Components

You will need the following parts to hand before you begin this installation. While many of these parts can be sourced from scrapyards and donor vehicles, we highly recommend purchasing new parts (*) in some cases.

• Aircon heater matrix containing evaporator with fitted expansion valve
• Aircon-compatible radiator with temperature sensor
• Condenser and fan
• Compressor and bracket
• Receiver Drier
• Pipework
• Aircon Loom

Installation

Heater Matrix

The Heater Matrix, which contains the evaporator, is the most cumbersome part of the installation since you need to remove the dashboard to do it. So that we don't repeat ourselves, learn more about removing the dash here.

With the dash out, we need to drill some holes into the bulkhead from the drain pipes. The main hole is located on the transmission tunnel on the left hand side; curl back the carpet from around the foot air vents, and you should see an oval shape cut into the sound deadening. This is where the rubber drain hole needs to be:

Once the holes are in place, the heater matrix can be fitted in place. Don't reassemble the interior yet though; we still need to deal with the pipework.

Pipework

The rubber and metal pipework is what allows the refrigerant to circulate around the system. There are two main pipes; the supply and return from the engine bay into the cabin area to feed the heater matrix. Then there's the individual links between components within the engine bay.

To start with, lets look at getting those supply and return pipes through the bulkhead. BMW helped out by stamping a cut-out into the shell, and all you have to do is find it and knock it out with a hammer. It's located next to the battery tray, under the bonnet clamp. Remove that clamp, and tap around with a hammer until it pops out like so:

Then you can feed your pipes in and bolt them up to the evaporator within the matrix. Once that's done, you can go about fixing the pipework to its proper fittings inside the engine bay until it looks like this:

Note that one pipe runs under the inner wing "lip", while the other runs down the side of the suspension turret. They will meet up by the condenser and compressor, in this arrangement:

The pipework will also include the receiver drier, which is located

Condenser and Fan

The condenser and fan mount in place in front of the existing vehicle radiator, which means you will have to remove the radiator to get to it. You'll also need to disassemble some of the front grille so that you can see what you're doing.

With the area clear, you can feed in the condenser and fan. The assembly will bolt to the slam panel

Compressor

Next we move onto the compressor. First thing is to install the mounting bracket, which is bolted to the side of the block on the exhaust side, like so:

Then offer up the compressor with its adjuster bracket, and fit it loosely. Then you'll need to install and a new belt on the middle groove of the accessory belt pulley. Unfortunately this will mean removing one of the existing belts; if you're not sure how to do that, learn more about changing belts.

Wiring

Most of the wiring is plug and play; the sockets only fit one way. But there are a few areas that can be quite tricky. For example, this:

This mass of spade connectors hangs loose from the end of the Aircon Loom, and it's not immediately obvious where it goes. The answer is the Fuse Box: you need to open yours up and feed those wires into it, according to their positions in the pictures below:

To confirm these wires:

• Thick Black/Green is Fuse 3
• Thick Black/Blue is Fuse 18

• The two small black wires in the space on Relay K1
• The small Brown wire (earth) in the space on Relay K6
• The small Brown/Black wire in the space on Relay K6

You will also need to connect the open end of the diode to the the clear spade connector (brown looking plug). This stops the aircon switching on when the fan hits slow speed with engine temps triggering the low fan speed with AC off. Don't forget to earth the loom at the nearside headlamp earthing post.

You will also be left with this black connector, which comes off the loom near the Aircon Switch:

It plugs into a special connector next to the main engine ECU, which sits under the instrument cluster on RHD cars. Pop off the knee panel under the steering column and you'll see the ECU and connector easily enough.