Vimes
05-24-2021, 04:19 PM
Long story short - I had a Vintage Air unit that I bought for a project that fell through 25 years ago, which wound up in my dad's attic. He told me he had a buyer for it, and it turned out to be him that bought it instead of one of his car buddies. When he died, I found it in his attic while cleaning it out, and brought it home. I decided to use it for my current project but after 25 years in his attic, it didn't fare too well. The foam seals were shot, and the vacuum diaphrams were likely dry-rotted. I didn't feel it would work very well as-is, if at all.
I called Vintage Air to see what it would cost to have them tear it down and refurbish it. They said they don't refurb old units but they would give me a pretty hefty discount towards a new unit if I sent the old one in. So, off the old unit went, and they are building me a new unit, which should be here in about a month. They're even sending me the next size larger unit which will suit my project better than the old one would. And, what they are charging me is about what I expected a refurb to cost.
Considering the old unit was 25 years old, I wouldn't have expected any company to say anything other than "sorry, we can't help with that." The fact that they were willing to help me get a new unit using the old one as a trade-in was phenomenal. I'm very happy with this, because it also means that I can use one of their small 4-knob controllers in place of the much larger factory control unit which will allow a double-DIN screen of some sort. Plus, the new unit uses electronic controls, not vacuum like the old one, so I'll have a lot more flexibility with placement. Not to mention, the whole unit itself is going to be roughly half the weight of the factory unit. I'll post what it actually works out to be in my build thread.
I called Vintage Air to see what it would cost to have them tear it down and refurbish it. They said they don't refurb old units but they would give me a pretty hefty discount towards a new unit if I sent the old one in. So, off the old unit went, and they are building me a new unit, which should be here in about a month. They're even sending me the next size larger unit which will suit my project better than the old one would. And, what they are charging me is about what I expected a refurb to cost.
Considering the old unit was 25 years old, I wouldn't have expected any company to say anything other than "sorry, we can't help with that." The fact that they were willing to help me get a new unit using the old one as a trade-in was phenomenal. I'm very happy with this, because it also means that I can use one of their small 4-knob controllers in place of the much larger factory control unit which will allow a double-DIN screen of some sort. Plus, the new unit uses electronic controls, not vacuum like the old one, so I'll have a lot more flexibility with placement. Not to mention, the whole unit itself is going to be roughly half the weight of the factory unit. I'll post what it actually works out to be in my build thread.