This post is about making some “man glitter” while adding a little bling to serpentine system. I’m not interested in having a hotrod-style serpentine system with chromed covers on everything, but the A/C compressor’s clutch is coyote ugly. I spent a couple of nights searching for a cover, but I couldn’t find one. I finally called Vintage Air and was informed that it’s listed in the print catalog, but not in their web shop. If anyone wants one, the part number for the plain aluminum version is 04407-MCA.
While the cover is nicer than the clutch, it’s pretty plain. So I decided to machine some holes in it to give it a little visual interest and reduce weight. This also gave me a good excuse to use the rotary table. One way to think of “occasional” tools is the CapEx per part made (mistakes don’t count LOL). So, a second part cuts that number for the rotary table in half and it helps the milling machine number as well.
These were the lightest fluffiest chips I’ve made. The man glitter went everywhere and took a while to clean up. My wife gets upset when this stuff makes it to the sofa so I had to vacuum all of my cloths and hair.
My 3-jaw chuck wasn’t large enough to grab the cover on the OD, so I needed to use the interior jaws to grab it from it’s ID. Because the cover has a profile and the jaws are stepped, I wasn’t sure if the end mill would hit the jaws. I placed a lump of clay on one of the jaws and pushed the cover in place which indicated that I had enough clearance. I aligned the table and chuck per my previous post, loaded a 3/4” end mill, moved the Y-axis to what looked good, locked the milling machine’s X and Y axes, locked the rotary table, and plunged with the z axis. I then rotated the table 60 degrees and plunged again. I repeated that four more times for a total of six holes. The rotary table makes this type of operation easy.
I just need to finish brushing it. Hopefully the A/C compressor is done until it’s time to fabricate the lines.
