Summer is drawing to an end and I somehow managed to survive it. But I'm not as young as I used to be and dammit, I think I deserve to own a car with a working air conditioner.

Soooo, I'm carefully planning for summer '05 and I would like your opinion. There's a fellow in Texas who is selling replacement parts of a Volvo air conditioning system. Here is the page he is displaying on e-bay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7920867585&category=33543

My question is this.... Assuming I can get all the right parts together for my 1984 Volvo GL, wouldn't it make sense to hire (I'm not going to do this) a competent mechanic with all the right tools to swap out all the old parts with new parts, rather than get all the old parts running again?

As they say, it's the labor that kills you, so I might as well use new parts on this job, don't you think? Afterall, the parts seem so damn affordable.

I thank you for your sage advise, wisecracks and wisdom. ---Amtrak