2 Vintage A/Cs ???

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i like all those-i have a westy like the first one,mine,made around 1976,is slightly older than the early '80s looking one pictured but is one awesome AC very cold and very quiet for the air delivery.I also have a couple smaller westys~5000 BTU,one from '73 the other '84,but those are a little noisy as they use axial propeller type fans for the evap.coil.One of the best vintage ACs i have ever seen/experienced was a philco-ford from around 1968;just quietly cranked out the cold with ease no matter how hot it was outside.While most ACs condenser fans blow the air through the condenser,the philco-ford sucked the air through-more effective and not as prone to plugging with tree fuzz.
 
Philco "Noiseless" Series

I remember them well.

I have a old Chrysler Airtemp (H07-91) 6,500 BTU. They used the same design. The air got pulled through the coil and was discharged through the Side Louver and a set of fins in the front right next to the compressor.

You can see to the left through the grill the other set of internal louvers that pushed the air away from the condensing coil.

toploader55++12-8-2012-05-00-5.jpg
 
GE Window Unit

Before my parents put in central air in the late 1980's, we had a monstrous GE window air conditioner in our den window that cooled the den, kitchen and back hall. It never gave any trouble. The only thing that happened was a couple of times a weep hole or drain hole on the outside clogged and water would puddle inside the unit. It was from the mid 60's and when the central air went in we gave it away. I remember my mother commenting that the power bill went down by almost one-half.

Great old vintage appliances. Built to last!!!
 
I still have the WH unit from the mid 60s like the second one pictured. It is a beautiful unit and produced very cold air. Of course, it gobbled watts. It is the one I bought from Georgia Power Company. on the condenser side, it had a little scoop to pick up the water so it could be thrown against the hot coils. It had a neat steady buzz to it. It was a 230 volt 12K BTU unit.
 
My childhood home(up until about age 12) didn't have central air and we had 2 big A/C units. A GE made JC Penney model in the living room downstairs and a Sears Coldspot in my parents room upstairs. We used a box fan in the hallway outside their room to get air to the other rooms. Most of the other homes in the neighborhood still had window/wall units and I could usually tell from the outdoor cabinet if they were GE or Sears/Whirlpool units. Those were by far the most common. Both of ours were 220 models so I can only imagine what they would cost to run today!

Speaking of A/Cs, does anyone have any pics of older PTAC units? For some reason, these always fascinated me. Maybe it was because they heated and cooled, were close to the floor and easier for me to investigate, but it was always a treat for me as a kid when we would go on vacation and stay in a hotel. I still remember 2 distinct models that were common back then, one was the GE Zoneline with the pushbuttons and the outdoor blower visible on one side of the exterior cabinet. The other was a Friedrich Climate master which it seemed all newer hotels being built in the 80s had. Today it seems all of the PTACs(GE, Carrier, Amana, LG) all look the same.
 
You talk about something that pulled the juice?! It was those in the wall heat/ac units. My undle's studio apartment had one. Years later it was converted to natural gas and I can't remember what type of a/c, but the word was that the combo unit was too expensive to operate. It was a GE and it looked very much like the GE window air conditioner we had in our den. Like you said, my uncle's GE combo unit was down near the floor.
 
Does anyone have any experience with Fedders units with the Weather Wheel? Neither ours nor our neighbors' units would run through the night without frosting up. We stayed in motels in the 50s with Fedders that would ice up. I remember especially once in a motel called The Alamo Inn, the filter had not been serviced in a long time and mom made them move the bed before doing anything with the unit after we called the office because the room was getting warm. This motel was across the highway from the Gulf in Gulfport, Mississippi (0r M-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-crooked letter-crooked letter, I-humpback-humpback-i). Alamo Inns had stuccoed fronts that were the ends of the buildings that ran from the front to the back with sidewalks between them and the room doors opening onto the sidewalk. The office was in the middle of the front with a big picture window. All of it was swept away by Camile in 1969. I guess that cleaned the filters.

But even with the newer foam filters washed weekly, Fedders units froze up at night unless you turned the thermostat to a way warmer setting, something my parents and most other adults did not understand. The Westinghouse unit did not freeze up at night.
 
Fedders

I never heard of Fedders until I went to work for the state and they were in every window at our old office. Some new. Some old. And you guessed it. I was thrilled to be on one of the offices that had a really old Fedders that was still running. LOLLL
 
Fedders Weather Wheel.

My Parents had a "1 Ton" unit in their bedroom. We would put a sheet of "Masonite" up blocking the Hallway entrance to the Livingroom. That 1 ton would cool the hallway, bathroom and My Bedroom. It did Ice up and then Dad had it hauled away for service. Turns out it was low on Freon and the Thermostat went bad. They put the unit back in about 4 days later and you could Refridgerate 25 or so Sides of Beef in their room. Good Lord was that air cold !!! Never Iced up again. It had 4 buttons. Black was off, Red was Ventilate, Aqua was Cool, and White was Exhaust. there were also 2 Rotary Dials. On the left was the "Exhaust, Ventilate and Closed" Damper adjustment, and on the right was the Themostat. One speed fan only.
It was the ever so stylish BattleShip Gray, Weighed about 140 lbs and stuck out of the window no exageration close to 24" and/or every bit of that and possibly more.
 
GE.

We had a 15,000 GE in our Living room.

Originally as described before about the 1 ton in the Parent's Room, we were a 1 A/C house.

A few years later, My Dad had a friend that used to find things that "Fell off the Back of a Truck". Washers, Dryers, Hair Dryers, Color Tvs etc. And Air Conditioners.

He brought home a 15,000 GE. It wasn't the "Super Thrust" model but as Andy said above not much thrust, But it was more like "Blobs of Freezing Cold Air fell out of this thing." And it truly was the Ugly Duckling of Air Conditioners.
 
old GE ACs

i have a big 1958 vintage 230v GE i use to cool the garage on very hot days-forget the capacity,but it is a "through the wall" type with a big 5-blade fan seen through the outdoor grille to force air through the horizontal condenser.The evap is also horizontal with a ~10"4-blade axial fan moving the air.This thing has a huge low speed 1725 RPM compressor-sometimes i will start this AC just to hear it run LOL
 
it had 3 round louvers that could be turned individually,but the inside grille was broken up pretty bad(this A/C was a dump grab,evap was badly plugged with lint and dust-that is all that was wrong)so a new grille was made for garage duty-i did keep the round louvers though.
 

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