How To Replace AC Compressor 1965-70 Cadillac Sedan DeVille

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Hi. My name is Mike Green. I want to help you save time and money repairing your vehicle. I have 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks. My company, 1A Auto, sells high quality replacement parts over the internet. In this video I'll be showing you how to install these parts. By the end of this video, you'll know how to install them and where to get them. That's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're going to replace a compressor on a Sedan DeVille, '67. Here's some of the tools you'll for it. It's generally about the same for most GM cars from the late 50s into the early 70s, actually late 70s, using this type of compressor.

Here we've got a '67 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. Obviously, you can see here, . I know it's hard to tell, actually, but . this is the clutch on the A/C compressor, you can see that it's pretty bad, so what we're going to do is we're actually going to replace the whole compressor.

What we did before this is we took it to our dealer. They evacuated the system and then did a vacuum check on it. What they did is they, basically, put in negative 30 pounds of pressure and made sure that the car held it and it did. It held it for an hour, so that means that the system, as far as the condenser and all the lines and everything, is all in good shape. Obviously, this compressor needs to be changed so we're going to change it and then have the A/C charged and hopefully, everything else is in good shape and it'll work.

Now to change the compressor, it's pretty easy. You've got a plug here to remove which is nothing more than just pulling it and then there's an Allen screw right in behind, right there. We've got to undo that Allen screw and take this off the back. Now, you can hear a little hissing sound that's actually vacuum going into the system. You never want to do this with a charged system, because it's actually illegal to allow the gas to escape out. There's that off. I'm taking this bolt and this bolt and pulling the compressor from that bracket. There's our compressor out.

Here's my original compressor. Here's my rebuilt one. You see everything is the same: position there is the same, the clutch is all the same. Distance of the drive from there, everything looks good. In the back, you can see that we're going to have to switch this bracket over. This will come out and it has new openings in it already so we can switch this bracket over and then we'll bolt it on. We want to get these tight.

I'm getting ready to reinstall the compressor. Remember the compressor bolts into the bottom of this bracket and this bracket pivots to tighten up your fan belt. Now I've got my two bolts back here ready, they're in but I'm just going to set them like that. Then I've also taken the O-rings off of here and when I took this O ring off there was some rubber stuck in there so I'm going to use a razor blade and clean that up a little bit. You want to make sure this is as clean as possible so your compressor and your lines get a good seal to each other.

Here's the new compressor, put it down in. Now, at this point, there's a plug back here to protect the lines, you've got some pliers to pull the plug out, make sure my O-rings are still in there. Get my Allen bolt started into the new compressor first. Here you can see that I'm just slowly putting my compressor bolt in and making sure my lines go in correctly. I'll just hand tighten that for right now. I can set my compressor down into place, push my bolts through here and there, with the washer, lock washer and nut.

To get these front ones in what I'm going to do is take a small screwdriver here, put it through that hole, and just have it lined up roughly there, and then, I can get this one will go right in. Take this out and pry up on this bracket just a little bit here. This Cadillac actually has a cushioned mount so that it takes vibration away from the compressor. I can tighten these 1/2 inch bolts from the compressor to the bracket and tighten them right up. What I'm going to do is I'm going to tighten these up so that they're almost tight. Here's my connector. I'm going to plug it in. I'm going to tighten up these bolts so they're almost tighten and then I'm going to use a crowbar to pry the compressor up and tighten up the belt and then tighten the bolts.

Then, we can take our belt, make sure it's down around the bottom, and feed it onto our compressor. Take a nice big pry bar here and pull it that way, tighten this bolt up right here. Then you want to tighten this one up over here as well here. Pushing on the bar, I'm going to tighten up the bolt. Let's tighten up our Allen nut here. I'm actually using a T50 Torx bit. It works quite nicely. It doesn't need to be incredibly tight but it should be tight, put it at about 40 foot-pounds.

Now that your compressor has been installed, you actually don't want to engage it until you've gone and had it fully charged because the charge includes the oil and lubricant for the compressor. I'm going to go, I'm going to take it to my dealer, I'm going to have it charged, and then go from there.

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