Converting normal aircon to climate control Options

[S8S8]

I know there's a great thread started by Cavegod on fitting climate control to a non-aircon Celica, but I'm looking to convert a normal aircon Celica to climate control.

Has anyone done this before? Cavegod's thread should be of great assistance, but I'm guessing my conversion should be a little more straightforward since I already have aircon.

I have a JDM SS-II front cut, so I know I have all the necessary parts, but I also know that it's definitely not just plug and play! Here's a few observations so far:

• The two aircon compressors appear to be exactly the same, right down to the same three-pin plug.
• Both dash units use the same plug (see first picture below) however the JDM harness has a lot more wires going into the plug. It seems my standard harness does not have the additional wires needed to run the climate control

Here's a pic of the back of the two dash units, with the standard aircon unit on top and the climate control unit below. The middle plug on the standard unit is just for the fan speed control dial, which is not used on the climate control unit.



And here's the front for anyone who is unsure of the difference:



I'd love to hear from anyone who has done this swap or knows anything about it.

Thanks.

[delusionz]

The JDM one has temperature sensors throughout the car, I'm not sure how many or where but i'm fairly sure the thing on the panel under the steering wheel that looks like a mini grill and has a rubber tube plumbed into it is one of the sensors (unless your car has this too)

I suggest you pull out the climate control loom out of the clip and trace it back to whereever it forks out. just destroy the dash if you need to, it's pretty much junk to you anyways, just save the bits that are better than yours

if the climate control harness joins up with a main body harness just splice it up and see where it goes

[Quakefire]

There was a uv sensor on the dash as well

[delusionz]

come to think of it, just swap everything lol, will just have to find you some jdm folding mirrors

[S8S8]

I've done a bit more work on this now that my interior is completely stripped out. I've replaced the fan box, heater box and whatever the box is in the middle that the air con pipes run into. Everything plugs in where it should, but that's to be expected since I've also swapped the whole interior loom from the donor clip.

I can't test the air con side of things yet since my engine won't start and there is no air con gas anyway, but I have been able to test the rest of its functionality. The controls for where the air runs to work fine, and the little flaps are moving as they should, but the actual fan won't run at all. I haven't connected up the temperature sensors yet, but I don't think that would stop the fan from working.

Unfortunately I didn't check the operation of the fan whilst it was still in the donor clip, so I can't be sure if it was working in the first place, but it doesn't seem like something that would break.

Anyway, I'll keep toiling away and hopefully I'll be able to put together some good info for anyone else contemplating this swap.

[S8S8]

The fan works fine now. There was a little control box still sitting in my pile of parts from the donor car that I forgot to plug in.

All that is left now is to get the gas recharged and then everything should be fine.

Overall the installation was pretty easy, but that's only because I had the whole interior stripped out whilst doing my Beams swap. It also helped having the full setup in the donor car, which meant I knew I had everything to do the job. If you were doing the climate control swap only, you would still have to strip out the interior which is a massive job!

It's not much of an upgrade really, but it does make the car a little more unique compared to most other 6th gens.