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[SkylinerRon]

Just looked at your 57 pic's again. Looks great, a super restoration!  A lot of time and dollars went into it. A stick with A/C convertible is indeed a rare car.  A few things I noticed, the blower motor and housing are factory a/c parts.  It would have had a three sheave pulley on the crank, two sheave on the waterpump and generator. Looks like it still has the group 27 battery box.
Goodluck,
Ron.

[djfordmanjack]

Great info !

There are three different heaters in 57. With the factory a/c ALL the heater parts are different.  If you are not going to use the factory a/c I would buy a complete non a/c heater for it.

You have to pull the housing to change the heater core, the a/c heater core is different and very hard to find. Probably could be recored by a good radiator shop.

The factory a/c cars have a long, long list of different parts than non a/c cars from engine pulleys to dash parts, just so you know if you have to change anything.

Carpenter's sells all the rubber seals for a/c-heater systems, I'd change them while it is apart.

I researched the a/c for my car a few years ago since I had not even seen a factory a/c 57 until, like you I bought one!

Good luck,

Ron B.

[lslevin]

Ron, that is great info!!!  We need to decide how we want to restore the HVAC system.  For now we will just enjoy the car and deal with improvements later.  Thanks again for all your help.

Larry and Lynn

[CobraJoe]

Welcome, and as said already; Beautiful 57's!!!!

[Ford Blue blood]

Larry and Lynn, If you haven't already you need to purchase every manual for the vehicles.  The 57 Ford manual has a great section on the air conditioning system.  The fiber parts of the "box" are irreplaceable, they need to be handled with care.  Most all the internal parts are available in one form or the other.  The seals are out there as well.  Carpenter has almost everything in the line of seals.  Good luck with it.

[lslevin]

Hello All.  This is Larry and Lynn updating you on our struggles.  It has been about 6 weeks since we posted and we have had a very interesting time chasing all the ideas and issues we raised in the previous posts.  We are proud to say, we declare the 57 convertible fixed and ready to go!!!  Along the way we fixed several small things and a couple of big ones but the main problem turned out to be engine timing.  We finally totally disregarded the timing marks on the balancer and started over.  We found the true TDC and discovered that the distributor was about 4-5 teeth out of time (retarded).  This was consistent with where we discovered the real TDC to be on the pulley.  So, we are confident we now have a safe reliable car and it is going to its first Florida car show tomorrow.  Thanks again to all of your comments and suggestions!!!  We are going to enjoy the car for the upcoming car show season.  Florida is backwards and has all the shows in the winter and spring.  Next summer we are going onto upgrading and improving some things.  Please keep in touch and we will do the same.

[mustang6984]

Ah...a touch of excessive retardation...kinda like me in some of my projects. Eventually all works out...but WOW...does the Bayer company make some change in the process!!!

Congrats! Enjoy that cruiser!!!   

[djfordmanjack]

Those are great news ! Its always difficult to find a problem that somebody else did wrong a long time ago.

Now we all want to see some shiny pics of the Sunliner at some cool Florida events and a few trophies inbetween ! 
Enjoy !