I started noticing a noise yesterday when I was warming up my car, like a grinding noise that I would hear every few seconds and would get worse/more constant as the car warmed up and as rpm increased..

so it's looking like the a/c compressor is shot, and I'm wondering if anything can be damaged if I keep driving with that or if I won't have to worry about anything other than the annoying noise until I decide what I want to do with it.. I never use the a/c anyways other than the defrost so I'm considering just removing it, how much work is involved in that?

 

To remove the A/C you're going to have to remove the compressor and get an A/C delete idler pulley and you can remove the condenser in the process to shed a little more weight.

As far as damage, it really depends on what is wrong with it. If the bearing has gone bad for the A/C pulley it's going to have a much higher resistance than normal and thus cause more strain on the serpentine belt as well as bog the motor down more. If it's something internal that doesn't have to do with the pulley you're probably going to just have to deal with the noise. The clutches for the A/C don't engage unless you're using the A/C so you could be ok as long as you don't use your A/C or defrost, but I would suggest pulling the serpentine belt to see if the A/C is hard to spin and if it is I would remedy the issue quickly.

 

yeah it seems like it's just internal, but i think im going to look into a shorter belt so I can just bypass it, that way I can eventually just replace the compressor if I want to sell the car or I want my ac back for some reason... It would be a quicker fix at least

where can I find the right belt and route to bypass the compressor in case I can't find someone with it in stock locally?

also, how much weight would I drop by losing the compresser and condenser if I did do that

 

http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/fbody/weights.htm

 

still looking for the shorter belt

 

sorry, one last bump.. still don't know where to find the serpentine belt/route to bypass the a/c compressor, but I'll let it die after this one

 

I don't get what you're asking... You get the belt from the auto parts store. Before you get it, measure out how long it needs to be by taking the a/c pulley out of the equation. When I get home, I could try and draw it for ya. Or if you do the a/c delete kit, I don't think it is any different than a stock belt.

 

oh ok.. I just figured they made a belt specifically for that purpose

I'll try to measure it with some string or something once I get the route

 

They don't make a specific belt, but they do make a specific A/C idler pulley so you can use the stock length belt.