You also need to remove the left front engine mount to remove the A/C belt:

 

thanks for that info RonJ, it would have taken me a while to figure out how to get that one on there. lol. So turns out, that motor mount is broken on my car? WTF. The rubber has basically deteriorated and cracked off around the bolt that goes through it. I got the compressor and belts on tonight. It sure is a pain trying to get the alternator belt up to the right tension without someone helping you hold it in place nice and tight.

Do you think I should get it filled up at my tires plus or do you think i should just fill it up myself? i don't have a gauge manifold and don't feel like buying one. After all that work, i'm kinda leaning towards getting it done by tires plus. lol. i'm tired as crap and covered in grease.

 

If you think the bad front left motor mount will cause some annoying engine vibration, then just replace it. The equivalent mount for my 97 Civic costs about $50 at Majestic.

Yeah, just have the local shop refill the A/C refrigerant to spec. Does the system also need to be evacuated first?

 

With the old system it had been drained and refilled quite a few times with r134a so i think the r12 should probably be gone by now, especially since i have changed the compressor and that's normally where all the r12 gets trapped when you try to drain it. it hasn't actually been evacuated though - they were going to charge me 90 bucks for an evac and recharge. ridiculous.

i'm not really that concerned about the motor mount unless you think i should be concerned.
is that motor mount even really that important?? theres the one already right next to the timing belt, it seems like that would be enough. idk

 

It's pretty important to have the system evacuated to remove air, water, and old refrigerant prior to recharging.

With respect to the mount, don't worry about it unless you begin to notice increased engine vibration.

 

so i'm screwed on the recharge basically? am i forced to do an evac since the system was open? why the hell is it 90 dollars? all they do is hook up the vacuum and let it sit for 45 minutes.

and i have always experienced increased engine vibration in my del sol and old civic when compared to newer cars. With new cars you can barely tell the car's on by feeling vibrations. Is this normal that I would notice such a difference in vibration between the older cars and newer cars? I'd think it would be expected, but i'm speculating because i've been wondering for a while if it's just because my car is 1993 and i'm trying to compare it to 2001+ cars.

 

so you guys are gonna love to hear this one...
i got the evacuate/recharge as recommended and shelled out the $115 to get it done. Well once it was finished they called and told me it was ready and that it's now blowing cold a/c. I was happy. I got there, paid, got in the car, turned the a/c on, and it was working. About 1/4 mile down the road it turned to warm air. I got home and noticed on my bill that they forgot to enter the $10 off coupon i used onto the bill. I gave them a call and I brought the debit card down there and they credited $10 to the account. Then I asked them if they'd take a look the a/c again. The mechanic was messing around and found that the compressor was not turning on normally, only working intermittently. He touched the a/c compressor relay, and it turned on... so then he squeezed the relay, and it stayed on, and blew cold air, and it was all operating correctly. I got home, replaced the relay with a new one i had leftover from my old civic's aftermarket headlight wiring problems. Plugged it in, and i have no more a/c problems. It blows ice-cold, which is a must in the sunshine state, with a black car with black interior.

 

Trust, that's great! Maybe you should write up and post all of the details of your successful R12 to R134a conversion, including both the mistakes and successes you had during the process. I think others might be very interested.

 

should people follow my example though? lol. i didn't replace the dryer which was probably stupid, but it seems to work just fine for me. i just made sure that once i opened the system, i installed the compressor and closed the system ASAP so that my dryer/accumulator would be okay.
i'll start a new thread so that it is separate from this.

 

It's a learning process. You could write up what you did and interject comments saying what you would have done with 20-20 hindsight. Maybe just append the write up at the end of this thread, retitling it appropriately.

I also understand if you think the write-up would be too much of a PITA.