Westfalia T3 with Chevy Bolt drivetrain

Vehicles are declared a total loss when repair costs exceed the value

Click to expand...

Actually, by law, some places it's more aggressive than that.

For example, "2/3" is often the rule. $3000 car has $2000 of damage or more, it's done. It will be given a salvage brand and then you have to rebuild it with a pretty serious and detailed inspection afterwards.

On anything more than 5 years old, a shopping cart scraping along 3 panels of paint can write the vehicle off.

There is also "unrecoverable" brands that are common, which is usually frame damage (can never be repaired). I think there's also a moderately common brand for, no parts from this vehicle can be used to repair another one, which is when it's especially compromised.

Airbags might also result in a unrecoverable or salvage brand by default in some jurisdictions, not just be a component of damage dollars.

They often don't want to give the contact info away, but there's usually a guy who works for the government that signs off on all that, (if for example, a vehicle was branded in error, or, the insurance adjuster filed the paperwork before it was agreed to be settled [happened to me], it's the guy they'll call to undo that). If you can get a hold of him and say something like "Hey, yeah it got written off for damage, but, it's just paint, it's structurally sound", they'll, very rarely, reverse the decision to brand a car. But you usually have to have proof and they have to talk to the insurance agent or whoever inspected the car. Usually there are inadequate notes (it's not the adjustor's job to help you prove this, nor the mechanics, nor was it at the time), or that person is gone or doesn't remember or whatnot. He's not the guy looking at the car, he's the industry guy doing the clerkwork, and in my case it was a person with significant clout, almost like you'd be careful how you act around a judge, even though the job is fairly mundane.

So your goal is to hook up the AC compressor and the electronics, but not either of the radiators (evaporator and condensor), for the sole purpose of fooling the battery charger to turn on?

Presumably, the AC motor/compressor will actually be turning on and off still, and compressing refridgerant, and all that, it just won't go to any rads?

Stating the obvious: If you hooked the entire system up, it would presumably work fine. All you're changing is removing the E and C rads and replacing them with a loop.

And your question is, will that "swap a radiator for a loop" trick work?

...

I only have partial knowledge about this, but, my immediate concern would be that parts of the AC system are going to just about immediately break if they get a liquid when they were expecting a gas. You compress the gas into a liquid which makes it hot, then you cool that hot down to ambient, then you pump the ambient liquid to a second radiator and then let it expand back into a gas that is now cold. That cold gas is what the motor/compressor is expecting, not a liquid.

So, sometimes there's valves and stuff like that to make sure that won't happen, but, I have a hunch they're suitable for normalish circumstances, maybe they won't handle or operate correctly being given a hot liquid rather than a cold gas. Maybe not, maybe it's fine.

When you add your refridgerant, same as on any other AC system, you'll have to pull a vacuum for an hour to get rid of any moisture in the system, because moisture + refridgerant = hydrochloric acid I think. But that's a solveable problem.

I'd be more tempted to electronically fool the system than mechanically fool the system. If it's expecting a voltage, fake the voltage. If it's expecting a sensor, fake the result of the sensor. Should be doable with just some resistors.