Arizona weather and A/C (was: symptoms of a plugged-up radiator?)

[treed2 at wsu.edu (T. Reed)]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the comments..

>> I'm moving to Arizona soon and since its typically a good 30-40 degrees 
>> warmer down there than Seattle, I've been thinking about whether my 16v has 
>> any chance of not overheating at every stoplight.
>
> Seattle to Arizona.  With summer approaching.  The change will be quite a 
> shock!  But I've been here 2 years now and love it (exiled from SoCal). 
> Where are you moving to?

Tucson. Well, actually a little south of Tucson.. my commute will be 15 
minutes at 55 mph with no stoplights.

> My 'roc runs hot as hell here in summertime, with the coolant temp needle 
> hovering very close to the max mark anytime I sit in traffic, despite the car 
> being in very good health.  I tend to not drive it a lot when the heat really 
> bears down (June-July-August-Sept) mostly for this reason.  I don't think 
> you'll overheat but it will run very hot, especially with the AC cranking 
> (and don't even think of driving in the summer months without it, unless 
> you've moving to somewhere at altitude).

Ha ha ha.. I was afraid you'd say that.

About 3 or 4 years ago, I charged my A/C with R134a, and it worked great 
for a while.. then one day while I was idling in a parking space, the 
engine started to slow down as if I was letting off the clutch slowly with 
the parking brake on. The A/C expansion valve had plugged and the a few 
seconds later there was a loud boom and the A/C system exploded in a 
spectacular white cloud. It looked like special effects at a concert or 
something.

I was pretty much broke back then and didn't have any money to try to fix 
it, and since at the time I thought I'd live in a Seattle-like climate 
forever, I just yanked all the A/C stuff to save weight. I modified the 
alternator/compressor bracket with a grinder to mount the alternator 
differently and put everything else in storage. It's probably all rusted 
inside by now and worthless.. and even if it wasn't I'd have to get a new 
bracket along with everything that was damaged from the 'explosion'.

So I don't have any A/C. I'm aware that it's pretty crazy to think I will 
be able to survive in AZ without it. But I just flew down there to find a 
house and I didn't have a chance to look at cars, too.

My current plan is to ship the Scirocco down there (about $900) and drive 
it to work and back for 2 or 3 weeks without A/C until I can find and buy 
something that has A/C. I figure in the morning it should be cool enough 
that I can get to work without sweating too much, and after I get home in 
the evening I can just take a shower.

Actually I'm not naive enough to think that the car shippers will get it 
there by their quoted date, so I'm going to rent a car on a weekly basis 
after I arrive and renew it as necessary. Expensive, but what choice do I 
have? A nice side effect of this is that I'll have A/C for that amount of 
time.

Got any tips for buying a car in Arizona? I didn't see much in the 
classifieds and Auto Trader seems to list only vehicles at dealerships..

-Toby