Guys With A/C... Please Lend Me Some Wisdom

[forcedinduction]

It's time to put A/C in the 65 GMC... along with the 2001 LM7 5.3 & 4L60. Currently it only has factory heat and defrost, which works well.

Goal: A/C, heat & defrost using a Sanden SD7 compressor mounted in the factory, lower passenger side location. Clean install and retain both floor vents.

Problems:
1. The GMC dash is very different from the C10 dash and none of the setups made by the big players, fit very well... if at all.
2. I'm not a big fan of the black, plastic vents merely being screwed to the bottom of the dash.
3. The Vintage Air GEN IV unit does not allow the passengers side vent to be used, due to the size of it.

Questions:
1. Vintage Air? Old Air? Custom Auto Air?
2. Which brand & model do you have?
3. Likes / Dislikes?
4. Has anyone done custom controls and/or custom control locations?
5. Which controls did you use?
6. Anyone done custom vents? If so, what did you do?
7. Anyone done an under dash A/C unit that is sudo-hidden or "drops down"?

I've searched on here a bunch and I know the general consensus says that Vintage Air is the best way to go. However, loosing the passenger side floor vent is not a route I want to take.

8. Has anyone installed the VA GEN IV and moved it away from the floor vent ?

Thanks for your time.

Please note that the area on the far left of the dash is not as wide as C10s and not enough room for a vent. The area between the ashtray and the rectangular panel to the right of it is only 2.5".
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[Clyde65]

I have an Old air Products Ac/ heat. Only thing I don’t like about it is no floor heat. Mine is from about 2004(I think), it does perfectly, I used a 2005 stock LS compressor, as long as it is t a variable valve compressor it should work fine. The cars mostly had the VV compressors. Oh, I also have an LS in my truck.

Good luck!

[The Rocknrod]

When I bought the Old Air system for my truck (recently) they were selling the floor heat big time on me.
Wait - wrong company. Anyway they do have a way to do floor heat now.

[64shortbox]

I'm sorry on the dash controls for your GMC, I'm not sure what to do about that but on my 64 C-10 I also didn't like the plastic A/C vents. One day when walking through the local self serve wrecking yard I found a pair of metal chrome vents on a 64 (I think) Chrysler New Yorker. They were cheap - like $4.00 each. I mounted them and eventually found a 3rd center vent on eBay for $25.00 and bought it. This was done years ago before corvettejim started reproducing the correct vents for the 64 - 66 C-10's. Her's some pics of what I came up with. You might want to try just wandering through the wrecking yards and see what you can come up with as far as the vents go.