air con system delete

[vwthunder]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]27521[/ATTACH]anyone have experience seperating these AC fittings. There seems to be a circlip inside but also a little pin that has popped up into the outer housing.

I managed to source a generic dayco belt. If it all fits i'll passn on the part number.

Little pin is only plastic, i remember pushing it trying to get it apart but then found the circlip which i had the crap out of to get it apart

[sambb]

I got the compressor out last night. Pretty easy really to just drop it out from underneath. The guy who posted earlier is right, it isn't that heavy - maybe 7kg. The condenser was nearly 2kg and there'd be 2kg of pipe work if you removed it all, so lets say 12kg max weight saving. In hindsight if my condenser was in ok condition I'd have just left it in there as from a weisght saving point of view its not worth the front of the car off grief. I just love that when I look into the engine bay from top or bottom there is just so much more room in there now to get your hands in etc. The condenser was a 10 year old turd too and would have impeded air through to the radiator a fair bit.
Fooling the 3 pin pressure sensor will be a bit of a pain I think so when I get around to it i'll look into forcing the high speed fan relay at the fan controller instead.
The bigger push connect didn't seem to have a circlip in it in mine but the other one that sits vertically next to the drivers side of the radiator did. I think the little push button type thingy is just the way that the internal locking tab insert locates into the female side of the connection and isn't something we need to worry about. we just need to get the inserts tabs pushed outward with a tool like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvngvwOy2ns

I'll give it a shot with a DIY effort like this and if that fails then i'll see a pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4Px_anskA

I've been driving around on that shorter ancillaries belt now all day and its spot on

[sambb]

you're right mate there is a circlip in the big compression clip and like you I wrestled with it for half an hour as the only circlip pliers I had that fit were expansion ones. My DIY release clips didn't work though - all too fat. I'll find something at work this weekend.

re: an alternate way to trigger the fans in the absence of the AC system, I found this vid which gave me a pretty good lead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af-jT9cAioM&t=354s

That is the exact same plug as ours so if you follow his guide on how to orient the plug, then you'll be right in identifying the pins. Our plug can only be accessed from underneath the car though. Also ours works a little differently to his mk4 golf. I managed to short the top and bottom right pins to get the slow speed to come on and it does this with the car off, ignition on or running. However I couldn't get the high speed to come on by bridging the bottom right and bottom left pins like he could and even with the ignition on or car running. I know my relay for high speed is ok because it was coming on and off today, so maybe the fan control module needs to also see some temp from the temp sensor before it enables that.
It means that I can solder tails to these wires and run them to a cabin switch or maybe even the AC switch now that its a spare. At an event or something I will be able to switch on the fans on cool down and also when I turn the car off I can let them run for a while and then restart the car and send through a fresh batch of cool to the baking engine.