With all of the AC components in place, I had to work out the plumbing from the front of the car to the compressor. I had planned on running the #10 hose from the Hurricane evaporator unit through the shift tunnel so I already had that hose in place with a connector under the shift lever area. I removed and modified the tunnel end cover that has the parking brake pulleys in it, to create another opening for the #10 hose. I modified one of the firewall grommets that comes with the Hurricane unit to allow for the angle of the plate so the hose could exit horizontally.
The trickiest part was bending two hard lines to snake from the tunnel area up past the engine subframe to the access box in the firewall where I would put the service ports and then the hoses to the compressor. Old Air sells aluminum straight AC tubing with the connectors on them in different lengths. I bought a #10 and a #8 in 24" lengths. I didn't have a tubing bender that would bend a 5/8" tube which is what the #10 is, so I looked on the internet and found the technique of filling the tube with sand so it won't crimp when you bend it. Worked great. I just measured where I wanted the bends and formed them over a large socket held in a vise. It took a while, doing a little here, a little there until I had them about right. Cleaned out the sand and fastened them in place on the cross member of the frame rail. Ordered the fittings I would need, cut the various tubings to length, then took them to a local hose guy here in Olympia that crimped them for me. Here is how it came out.
Lines from the compressor going down into the access box in the former spare tire well.
This is the connection in the tunnel under the shift lever. The shift cables are shown at the bottom of the picture.
Here is a picture of the tunnel under the parking brake handle. I connected the hose to the heater pipe to exit out of the tunnel cover through the original hole that the shift rod went through. I also routed the shift cables through that same opening.
Here is the view looking up at the rear of the tunnel with the parking brake cover and the hoses coming out. I hope to never have to service the parking brake cables, otherwise I have to disconnect the shift cable, AC and heater hoses to remove the cover. The hose on the left is the #8 hose that comes from the condenser and runs along the side of the cooling tube tunnel, where the speedometer cable normally runs. I am pretty sure this is where the factory AC hose runs as well, though I have never seen one in person. You can see the hard pipes connected and the elbow of the heater hose to be connected in the future.
Here's another view of it from the side showing the shift cables and heater hose exiting the original shift rod opening.
Here is the view looking into the access box showing the hard pipes, the service ports, and the hoses going up to the compressor. The yellow wire goes to the compressor clutch. It doesn't show well in this angle, but the hard pipes are attached to the ledge of the crossmember and do not encroach on the space for the future coolant lines from the radiator.
Here is a view looking up through the box showing good access to the engine, relatively speaking. I tried to route the AC lines around the sides of the access box so that I have plenty of room to work on the cooling plumbing, when I get to that.
Last, here is a view of the #8 hose to the hard pipe up front coming from the condenser.
Getting this whole AC system sorted out and behind me for now is a good feeling. Thanks again to
@LarryC for his threads on upgrading his stock AC system as it gave me the start on the knowledge to tackle this project. Thanks to Papa Tony for suggesting looking at the aftermarket AC systems to see if they could be adapted to an X1/9.