By Corky Guenther

I bought a “chrome bumper” Air Conditioning kit for our ‘67 MGB.  As it turns out, all chrome bumpered MGBs are not alike.  Really.  Who knew?  I previously recounted how the Compressor mounting brackets wouldn’t work and my fabricated solution (February, April & June 2021).  Yeah, progress is slow.  After getting everything in the engine compartment installed, the evaporator mounted, the freon hoses fabricated and the controls sorted; it was time to consider how to distribute the resulting hopefully cold air.  I had seen photos of other people using the radio cutout in the dash for center face level vents using vent assemblies from later (‘72- ‘76) models.  Online I found and acquired a used set and sure enough they snapped right in.  That left the dash end vents.  The housings supplied with the kit did not fit the end on the steel dash.  I suspect that they do fit the later chrome bumpered car dash.  Others have drilled holes for the vents in the end of the dash, but I was loathe to do that, so I set about fabricating a set of housings.

The first step was CAD (Cardboard Aided Design - corrected to Corrugated by Mike Outen Jr.).  I held a piece of corrugated against the door pillar and against the end of the dash and marked the profile of the dash with a sharpie being careful to allow for clearance for the door seal and kick panel.  Then a circle was drawn outlining the clearance needed for the vent outlet assembly.  Next, the PAD.  The corrugated outline was transferred to a piece of plywood so it could be sanded to conform to the end of the dash and the radius of the vent circle outline was increased to provide additional clearance and a small alignment hole drilled in the center of the vent circle.  The plywood pattern was traced out on 22 ga cold rolled steel.  Then 1-1/2 inch strips were cut for the periphery of the piece and sent to be TIG welded to form the housing.

The resulting housings were clamped together using the center pilot hole and two more holes drilled inside of the radius of the vent hole circle which were then used to clamp the housings to a plywood base for cutting of the circles using a hole saw which is slightly undersize for the vent.    It was necessary to clamp the housings to the plywood with two screws to prevent wandering of the hole saw pilot drill in the thin material (ask me how I know).  The hole saw was used to cut the circle for the vent assembly and the hole was filed to final size.

I had the housings powder coated to match the previously crinkle finished powder coated dash.  After powder coating the housings were drilled for mounting to the dash, which then was marked, drilled and the housings attached using button head Allen socketed screws (for access using a shortened Allen wrench).  The dash has an approximately ¾ inch recess at the front.  The housings were fabricated to mount within this small recess and flush with its rear so the housings appear as almost part of the dash.  After installing the vent assemblies, all that remains is to find room to route the vent hoses.