Below are some pictures of a visteon fs10 air conditioner compressor removed from a 1998 ford crown victoria. At the time of removal, the compressor:
-was around 10 years old
-the odometer read over 100k miles
-had spent an unknown number of hours idling without accumulating any miles on the odometer

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Here's the compressor removed from the car.



These were inserted into the suction and discharge plugs to keep debris from falling into the compressor



With the caps removed



The front clutch pulley bearings are toasted and do not operate properly



This compressor had sat unused for over a year in a humidity and temperature controlled garage. If you look closely, you can see a couple spider webs on it.



There was an oil sludge on the front half of the compressor casing, but this had been present for a long time as evidenced by the lack of corrosion under the coating.



And the back of the compressor. That black bracket holds some wiring when it's installed in a crown vic.



This is the front of the clutch. One of the rubber insulators has gone missing, and the others are damaged from excessive heat.



The front clutch disc isn't supposed to seperate like this.



Interestingly, the car still blew cold air out of the vents inside the car even with this compressor installed. The orifice tube in the lower evaporator line was relatively clean too.



Here's the front pulley bearing





Still unknown for sure what caused the clutch to fail. But prior to failure, the clutch seemed to hold acceptably in slow around town driving. But slipped badly at highway speeds.

I think i'll play it safe and install a new a/c compressor clutch relay prior to charging the system with the new compressor installed. And the vehicle also has a new condensor/radiator fan, because the old one turned really slow or often didn't turn at all. The fan failure was likely due to an excessive idling with the fan running continuously for hours on end. Pretty typical for the life of crown victoria p71's that have ever been in active police use.



After the snap ring had been removed, the ball bearings inside the clutch pulley could be seen.



And a closeup of the ball bearings. Note that some have gone missing, and normally there would be more than seen below.



Those two clutch discs generate a lot of heat really quick when they start to slip.



Here's the snap ring



A special clutch removal tool is supposed to be used to remove the pulley, but I just used a 1 pound hammer to pound it off. This compressor is never going to be installed on a car again anyways.



And the back of the pulley



And the front of the pulley



Now that the pulley is off, the bolts that hold the compressor housing together can be removed. At first, i tried using a regular hand ratchet to remove them. But things were corroded, and this was unproductive.



But a pneumatic air wrench was effective at getting them out.











The two halves of the housing didn't want to seperate easily. So the 1 pound hammer was used again.



And the rear head and valve plate from the compressor





And the front part



Here's the swash plate and the pistons.



And from a different angle



Spin the input shaft and the pistons start to move up/down as the shaft rotates.



When actually installed in a car, the input shaft of the compressor is overdriven and spins faster than the engine crankshaft. Take note of how large the diameter of the engine harmonic balancer is in relation to the a/c compressor clutch pulley in your crownvic.



The green colored liquid is refrigerant oil with the factory installed fluorescent green tracer dye in it.



Another reservoir for oil is inside the a/c accumulator/drier.



And the front half of the compressor with the input shaft removed



This felt washer sits in front of the front shaft seal and acts as an oil wick so that oil doesn't spray onto the clutch surfaces.



Another picture of the front half of the compressor housing



The refrigerant oil had a really high surface tension, and also acts like a magnet at attracting any dirt around it.



Here's the electromagnetic coil which would lock the clutch disc with the pulley when the compressor was commanded to be engaged. This part still smells burnt after sitting unused for over a year.



And the back of the coil. This part was removed using a 1 pound hammer again. This is not the proper service technique, but this compressor will never be reinstalled on an actual vehicle again so this is a moot point.



And the front of the compressor housing with coil removed.



The day was a little windy outside, and a peice of plant matter landed inside the housing. If you're servicing a compressor that will actually go back in a car, you probably will want to work indoors to prevent debris and dirt from getting inside your compressor.



And the rear head. The manifold block would normally bolt here.



The black ring is a flexible o-ring which seals the front half of the compressor housing to the rear of the housing.



And starting here, all of the pictures are of parts that have been cleaned/degreased and then re-coated in wd40 to inhibit further corrosion.



The compressor pistons all had numerical markings on them. This one is H 69



This one H 82



This one H68



Take note of the teflon compressor seal rings





And here you can see the spots in the pistons where the ball shoes would go.



And here's one side of the swash plate. You can see in the upper left corner, that some of the swashplate coating has worn away.







Here's the cylinder shell with the pistons removed



And the other side of the swash plate



Here is a washer and one of the roller bearings which slip onto the end of the swashplate shaft











And all of the bearings and washers inside the compressor



The front cylinder shell and valving is identical to the back.



Here are the ball-shoes which reduce friction in between the pistons and swash plate



And the felt oil wick again





Here's all of the parts inside the compressor





And with the valve reed plates removed from the cylinder shell



The valve reed plates are constructed of spring steel, and bend back & forth when the compressor is actually installed in a car and compressing refrigerant.



That black plate has some sort of polymer coating on it that melted a little bit and left a black outline on the silver plate in front of it.





Here's the swash plate with the bearing and thrust washers installed on it.



And the swash plate inside the cylinder shell.



Here's the parts in the above picture seperated apart.



And from a different angle



And a closeup of the bearings again



The input shaft is a little discolored on the front near the clutch. Wonder what hardness it would now rank at after recieving a heat treatment from the failed compressor clutch.











Here's two pistons. One with the ballshoe installed, one without.





And the front/rear of the ball shoes.



And a piston with both ball shoes installed and a swash plate inserted too. Note how the ballshoes allow the swash plate to change angles.







When assembled, there will be only 5 pistons inside the compressor. But each piston is double-acting and has two sides to it. So this is considered a 10 cylinder compressor.





The pistons had some scratches on the tops. Likely from the read valves hitting them.



There must be some sort of secret trick to getting the pistons with all 10 ball shoes on them installed into the cylinder shell. But for ease of assembly, the ball shoes were left out for these pictures.













Here's the inside of the rear & front heads of the compressor







And the outside of the housings after they have been cleaned.



This particular compressor fits a wide range of different ford vehicles:

1994	2002	ford crown victoria
1994	2002	lincoln town car
1994	2002	mercury grand marquis
2004	2005	ford focus
1996	2005	ford mustang gt
1994	1997	ford thunderbird
1993	1998	lincoln mark viii
1994	1997	mercury cougar
1997	2002	ford expedition
2001	2006	ford escape
1997	2001	ford e150 van
1997	2001	ford e250 van
1997	2001	ford e350 van
2000	2001	ford e450 van
1997	2006	ford f150 pickup truck
1997	2005	ford f250 superduty pickup truck
1999	2005	ford f350 superduty truck
1999	2004	ford f450 superduty truck
1999	2005	ford f550 superduty truck
2000	2005	ford excursion
1998	2002	lincoln navigator
2005	2006	mercury mariner
2006	2006	lincoln mark lt
2002	2002	lincoln blackwood

This swashplate FS10 r134a compressor will also retrofit into 1992-1993 crown victorias with the factory installed FX15 r12 compressor. But do note that most 1992 ford crown victorias will require a 7 groove pulley rather than the 6 groove pulley that you'll find in later crown vics.

Note that many of the ford trucks will have an 8 groove clutch pulley rather than the 6-groove clutch pulley that's typically found on passenger cars. And on some applications, the a/c clutch coil might need to be rotated some to change the connector clocking.

And if the rear head were to be changed from a top port manifold connection unit, to a rear port manifold connection unit you could also use this compressor in many more ford cars like the taurus, v6 mustang, etc...

Some people have talked about using an a/c compressor as a source of shop air to run pneumatic air tools from their motor vehicle while they're on the road. This compressor might work if you figured out a way to keep it oiled. But a better choice would probably be a compressor from the 1960's or 1970's car with an internal oil reservoir.

Ford and Visteon have filed numerous air conditioning related patents over the years. If you want information about the function of each passage inside the compressor, click here.