How A Fallen Tree Forced Me To Fix Our $800 NYC Taxi’s Air Conditioning Before Our 3000 Mile Trip

Tomorrow morning, far too early for a near-civilized human like myself, I need to get myself and my 14-year-old son into our $800/375,000-mile ex-NYC taxi and begin our big, improbable, cross-country journey. There’s still plenty I need to do for this taxi to be really ready, and plenty I need to do to prepare for the trip itself, like doing laundry and packing. And then I need to be writing and working at the same time. It’s a lot. And I think at least one important thing would not have gotten done today, but fate intervened. The intervention was a tree falling and taking down a bunch of power lines in my neighborhood. I still don’t have power!

I’m writing this on laptop battery power, tethered to my phone’s internet. My phone is almost out of juice, too, now that I think about it. But, the fact that I lost power at about 9 this morning set into motion a chain of events that led to an unexpected outcome today: I actually managed to fix the air conditioning in the taxi!

This is big news! I’ve been playing the lack of air conditioning down a bit, because there’s part of me that’s a bit masochistic, and thinks there’s some sort of virtue in suffering some discomfort. Let me be clear, that part of me is an idiot. Notice I didn’t even mention the no-A/C when I recorded this little reel:

 

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Also, when David and I were first working on the cab earlier this year, it was still cold out! I wasn’t able to truly imagine the muggy, sweltering heat we currently have, with this Carolina air so laden with moisture every breath is like you’re chewing a wad of flavorless air-taffy. It’s terrible. Anyway, I’m trapped in my electricity-unburdened neighborhood at the moment.

We actually bought a new A/C compressor, and I installed it this past week, thinking that should sort out the issue. I took the taxi to get aligned at a shop, and while it was there I had them recharge the whole A/C system with refrigerant and check for leaks; everything came out fine! Well, they had to replace one little rubber O-ring, but other than that, it was great! No leaks!

Great, except the A/C still didn’t work. The shop just kind of shrugged it off, which makes sense, since I’m pretty sure none of them were going to be driving this thing across the whole freaking country. I mean, I don’t think they are?

Anyway, the problem felt electrical; the compressor was new, there were no leaks and its full of refrigerant, so something must not be clicking on. I checked both fuses, looked for the A/C relay, which might be in Valhalla, because I sure as hell couldn’t find it on the cab, then noticed that the wiring to the compressor looked pretty, um, crispy:

It was all just kind of a mess down there. And I noticed that the A/C compressor’s outer pulley was spinning, but not the center, meaning the clutch doesn’t seem to be getting power. Discussions in the Autopian Slack channel all seemed to lead to the same conclusion: the clutch compressor needs 12V.

So, what the hell, I thought. Let’s test and see.

I used an X-Acto knife to scrape away some insulation on that little two-wire connector, then hooked up some alligator clip leads to the wires. I made a little chain of clip leads to the battery, where I connected them to the terminals. I checked with my voltmeter and confirmed: over 12V. It looked janky as hell:

When I got it all connected, I heard a promising click from the compressor – the solenoid or whatever inside that clutch! I turned on the car and started the A/C. I went to check, and the compressor was spinning, in the center, too! Promising!

I waited a few tense moments with my hands and face right next to the A/C vents, every sense attuned to the slightest drop in temperature. And then I felt it: cool air. Delicious, arctic air, blown from the dash! I went into the back, and felt it coming out even cooler back there! It was a miracle!

I taped up the wires in my absurdly janky-ass fix, and made promises to get an inline fuse in there, which I will. Also, an electrician I just made up right now once told me that, yes, blue painter’s tape is the safest, best tape to use! Then he had to go on stage to collect his Nobel Pulitzer prize in Electrical Work.

The important thing to note here is that had that tree not fallen, taking out the power to my house, I would have been working on blogs and whatever as I usually do, even though I knew I need to pay some attention to the cab. That tree gave its life to force my hand, which is what led me to finally getting that A/C working.

I’m so happy it works! I’m sure I’ll have to replace these wires at some point on the trip, but whatever, it beats the hell out of sweltering in there, especially in the back compartment, which just has two tiny windows and not great ventilation. Speaking of the back and the whole interior, remember how disgusting it was?

Of course you do. No one forgets something like that. Well, look how much better it is now! First, up front, where in addition to de-moldifying, I also made a fe small upgrades to make this more usable:

And, in back, too:

Of course, the fun part is that, as promised, I installed a genuine 1980s-vintage 8-bit computer setup in the rear, for top-quality retro entertainment:

Look at that! An Atari 600XL, complete with 16K of ram and about a half-dozen cartridges. It also has built-in BASIC, so if we come across some sticky situations that needs a program written to solve it, we can absolutely handle that. I just can’t save it, because I didn’t bother bringing a disk drive or cassette recorder, but whatever. The joystick is velcro’d to the bulkhead there, as is the computer itself, so one could potentially put it on their lap, if they wanted.

I also made sure there was plenty of power charging options, because we’re going to be in this thing like a week, and I’m sure my kid will have a laptop and several Nintendo DS variants and his phone and whatever the hell else he’s bringing. But he should be covered, electrically, at least.

I also had to cover up some of the NYC-specific markings on the taxi, because if I go into NYC with some of that stuff un-obscured, I think the cops or the livery commission goons can legally work me over.

It’s been raining nonstop here so I didn’t get a chance to do much cosmetically, but I did some quick spray painting of paintless parts, being very careful to select the wrong shade of yellow and allow for significant dripping, so, you know, mission accomplished. I did slap an Autopian logo on the illuminated top panel thing, too.

The rear doors open and close now, though you can only open the rear door from the inside, which is a bit of a pain, though better than nothing.

The driver’s side inside door handle doesn’t work, so I need to reach out the window to get out, and the outside rear passenger side sliding door handle doesn’t work either. It also hesitates just a bit while driving sometimes that makes me a touch nervous, but I don’t have time to do anything about it, so I’ll just say a bracha over the fuel system and hope for the best.

Really, I’m doing an awful lot of hoping for the best with this whole thing; I really don’t know for sure if this taxi will make such a monumental journey. I know SWG and David and I and Andy all put a lot of effort into resurrecting this taxi that just craved the sweet release of death, so I think I have cause to be hopeful.

Also, the power just came back on, so I better start doing some laundry?

If anyone is curious or wants to say hello and maybe laugh at my absurd A/C fix, here’s our plan:

See you on the road! I hope!