Have a shop evacuate it for you. Then tear all that stuff out. As long as you have heater core and blower motor at the firewall your defrost will work and you'll have heat 
X2 The defrost mode will still work, but it will not work as well without the compressor to lower the humidity as indicated in the previous post. It can be very expensive to get an A/C system working again, choose wisely.You will blow hot air up at the window on defrost mode, but it won't work totally as intended since the defrost mode uses the AC to pull moisture out of the air. I usually get a good window defrost gel to put on the windows in winter to help with fogging.
Well, it wasn't low on coolant. It was *bone dry* with absolutely no pressure. Since I'm replacing the tranny cooler (it blew last week) and installing a remote filter, I decided to rip it all out today. The condenser was where the old tranny cooler was mounted, and I wanted to just get rid of it. It was easy to take it all out - just a little time consuming. Since I had no idea where the leak was and had no interest in reviving it... I figured I'd just get it outta there.
I am very interested in turning the compressor into an onboard air compressor! I did a little search and came up empty so far. If any of you who have done it can point me to a link / thread off the top of your head, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm thinking the compressor may need a rebuild... given its age and the fact that there was a leak somewhere. So I yanked it too - it's on my bench. The electrical also had some problems - (melted / spliced wires at some point in the past) so that will need re-done too.
THanks for your replies. I haven't truly done my search time in earnest on the air compressor thing, so I'll keep lookin on my own. :thumbup
Nice diagram Kenny.:thumbupI'll try and get a pic of mine in a day or two. I add a few drops of air tool oil every now and then instead of using an oilier. The freon has a lubricant in it which is, of course gone when you do the conversion.
This should help.....
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