Rooftop AC

69bronco said:

I'm going to install a Coleman Polar on my 2012 170. My question is placement. There are 2 locations in the roof where you can get a 14" square hole without running into ribs. One is towards the front, which I have used for a fan/vent. The other is near the middle of the van which will not work with our layout. Has anyone done an installation towards the rear where there is no cutout? Maybe shimming the ribs? Thanks

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atulin said:

I installed mine in the middle position but because of the outside width of the gasket I had to cut the gasket to fit a little bit of the side ribs. I would suggest just trimming the gasket to match the ribs it crosses on the front and back. When you tighten down the unit it compresses that gasket enough that it shouldn't leak. I would think that shimming on the outside to make a flat area would be much more work and more likely to leak. I would put something for support between your inside frame that you make and the roof rib just so it doesn't have anywhere to go when you crank it down. I ran into this problem when I installed my Maxxfan in the back but I notched out the roof rib on the sides so the lip of the fan could slide between the top of the rib and the roof.

If you can make it work, the middle is really the ideal location because the air follow will just barely reach the front seat area. In the back you'll be wasting a lot of cooling freezing the back windows.

If anyone reading this is thinking about a Polar Cub I have a basically new one with about 4 hours on it with heat and the inside air control portion I'll sell for $500 plus shipping - just paid $687 plus shipping. The cover is painted black but I can paint it back to white. Send me a PM if interested.

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