Why is it that with solid lifters you can't have air conditioning?

Most solid lifters are made from chilled iron, so there's no need for air conditioning....

I know this is a joke?

It used to be that the more performance oriented cams were all solid lifter, and had a choppy idle. The choppy idle played hell with the AC compressor. Also, AC compressors seem to have Issues rev'ing past 6k RPM..

The factory figured that they would rather not deal with a 70 Z28 LT-1 that had AC issues.

So, if you had a fairly modern grind on your cam, you could run solid lfters. As long as you kept the RPM's down when you had the AC on.



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Soon to be BBC, TH-400 w/2000 stall, 3.73 diff w/ Powertrax locker.

Ditto My73LT!

A little Duntov, -097 solid cam in a 350 would be nice with A/C, imho....

pdq67

here's a wild thought...when you race, turn the A/C OFF...when you cruise on a hot-assed day, turn it ON.

Back in the OLD days, we commonly ran our solid lifter 327s up to 7-8,000 rpms, and the solid lifter 302s and 283s spun nicely up to 9-10,000 rpms. Just imagine your "fridge" compressor trying to engage during a power shift at 10,000 rpms. If you are lucky, you would toss the belts. If not, your little compressor clutch would hopefully self destruct trying to engage at 10K. Last resort might be the tiny pistons of the compressor making new holes in your nice hood.

The only way I would consider air conditioning on a serious performing solid lifter engine would be if I could find or make 2:1 or 3:1 underdrive pulleys for the compressor. That way, with 3:1 reduction, the compressor wouldn't be running any harder at 9,000 engine rpms than it would be running on a normal engine at 3,000 rpms.

I guess my real question is, "Why would you want air conditioning on a serious performance car anyway????????? It is the greatest power robbing option you can add. Why not pull a trailer full of cold beer instead? It would be more fun, and it wouldn't slow you down any more than air conditioning.

<font face="Arial,Verdana" size="2">Originally posted by onovakind67:
Most solid lifters are made from chilled iron, so there's no need for air conditioning....</font>

so very true, That is the reason.


But some folks think its because GM used that long A6 compressor that took up so much room along the valve cover area that servicing the solid lifters every 6 months would not happen if there was a compressor in the way.

Some of it is because of the high rev range, some of it's because it's hard to find a smooth enough idling solid lifter cam to idle with the AC on.

It's simply due to the high RPM potential.

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70 SS 454 CI Dynoed 684 HP, 702 TQ All Aluminium Fuel Injected Small Block , plus 200 - 500 HP NX nitrous system.