You are a man after my own heart.  I have been pondering a system like this
for the past several summers.  (Collective sigh of, "Here he goes again")

At first I thought along the line that you have with adding an electric motor
to spin the stock compressor, etc.  However I found that the horsepower to
spin the stock compressor was around 5 hp and an electric motor that is 5 hp
is quite large.  So I discarded this idea.

Second idea that I believe someone on this list had, was to get a compressor
like the ones that are in A/C units or refrigerators (they don't spin a
compressor, but use a solenoid or something- don't really know but there is
no external moving parts).  Then you could put fittings on it that would hook
to your exsisting fittings where you would normally charge the A/C system on
the Vanagon.  This external apparatus could live above the tranny (sorry
syncro folks) and have its own set of fittings on it for servicing the
system, etc.  You would hard wire it in to a plug along with the other
components of the system like a power convertor to run your DC fan motors,
etc off of AC current.

Now if I could only find the time to work on such a unit!  Of course Karl
will say why not just slap a small AC unit in the window and forget it, and
maybe he is right, but you can always dream :)

Thanks,
Ken Wilford
http://www.vanagain.com
John 3:16
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