question about the air conditioner
 

can anyone tell me what horse power gain I would get from removing the a/c from the engine, pulley, compressor and all. I know that without the extra pulley there should be some kind of gain. just wondering how much of one it would make in the hp and tq ranges? thanks

you can expect about a 10% gain over when the compressor is engaged.

Also you'll get a nice weight savings. I yanked the AC in my p5 and the car felt more responsive and really cleaned up a lot of the clutter from under the hood.

not sweating > 5-10 hp

well, for those of us that have half the cylinders you do we have no choice!!

the lack of ac was only an issue in alabama for about 3 months out of the year. I rolled the windows down, opened the sunroof and sped up. It wasn't perfect but it was better.

bwahahaha !

yeah, true...

actually you can still feel the difference with th a/c running though

Dosnt the air condition run the HVAC system so no more heat or defrosters ?

nope....the ac is only used to dehumidify when the defrost is turned on. It still works just not as quickly. If the car is warmed up and you turn on defrost it'll clear the windows fast.

now aside from the weight loss if I just remove the a/c belt will I still get the 10% gain in power?

yes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that only a 10% gain over when the A/C is turned on? Besides the weight savings, is there any reason to remove the belt instead of turning the A/C off? I'm not too sure how the drive pulley system works, but previously it had been said a that the gain was "about a 10% gain over when the compressor is engaged", so it seems just as easy to not engage the compressor if all you want is HP.

Andrew Beard

You'll still get a performance gain. Though I doubt it will be 10%...The engine still has to spin that pulley, so removing it is lowering the weight that the engine has to spin, which will lower parasitic loss...kinda like how a underdrive pulley gives you a little extra power

thats what I meant...when the compressor is un-engaged.

anytime you have a belt wrapped around your crank pulley and wrapped to something else you will create drag...a LOT of drag. Think about the tension on the belt. Then imagine if you have another pulley or two in the mix.

Removing the AC drops a fair bit of weight from the vehicle and if done correctly can easily be re-installed in a matter of an hour or so.

I removed everything in my p5 in about 45 minutes...re-installed it all in about 1.5 hours (minus the recharge).