Paul:
You must be one of less than a handful of people who has taken the time to fully understand the workings of GM’s 60's and 70"s ATC systems. I for one am glad you did!
I have a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham that has an ATC system – currently inoperable. It is interesting to note that the DAFT Tool 1972 “Automatic Temperature Control Service Manual” did not include the 1965-1970 Pontiac ATC system. With reference to these particular years of Pontiac ATC’s, the DAFT books says “Total production of these [Pontiac] systems did not exceed 2% of the cars built in any one model year. Because of the small number of cars involved, descriptions and servicing of these systems has been omitted”. So it seems that 1965 to 1970 big Pontiac buyers did not see value in upgrading from the Custom Air Conditioner option (in 1966 a base price of $421.28) to the Automatic Temperature Control Air Conditioning option (in 1966 a further additional base cost of $63.19).
I have found, at least for 1966, the Pontiac Air Conditioning Shop Manual and Pontiac Craftsman News provide quite a bit of useful support information. And Pontiac also published a stand-along “Pontiac Automatic Temperature Control – 1965-1966 – Servicing and Repairing, Model with Auto Temp” manual. And there is probably some training literature of which I am not aware.
And there are a couple of diagnostic testers that were released (after 1966) that can, it appears, be used to help identify problems with the 1966 Pontiac ATC system (and later GM - and non GM - ATC systems). These include the Robinair/Kent Moore J-23678 “Electro-Vacuum Programmer – Automatic Temperature Control Tester” and the surprisingly sophisticated looking “GM Programmer Bench Test Universal Analyzer II for Automatic Temperature Control Systems”. The GM Programmer does not seem to have a Kent Moore number and may have been developed and released directly by GM. These two units are readily available on Ebay – a 3rd test unit, Kent Moore J-22684 (Automatic Temperature Control Tester), released in 1967 for, it seems, only Pontiacs, is more difficult to find.
One headache I am running into is locating - and fixing - the various vacuum links in the many, many hoses that are used in this unit – what a pain. Crawling under the dash to de-bug vacuum leaks is for the young and thin only. For instance, It would seem take a Wallenda family member to connect the vacuum multi-hose coupler to the ATC control unit while in the car.
So I applaud your efforts to understand and repair these systems. You may see some of my components in the future.
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