Removing the ac compressor from my Ford Escape?

"oldturkey03 has you covered if you can follow all of that, it looks like its right out of the Ford shop manual. You don't say why you are replacing your compressor. I would like to stress the safety issue with the pressurized system. To do it by the book the freon should be captured and reused but there are so many after market DIY a/c repair products and so much counterfeit freon on the market I prefer to replace the freon with new gas and hope it is actually the real stuff and if it isn't it will at least be all the same type!

You need to be sure there are no debris lose in the system. If the compressor suffered a mechanical failure there could be pieces of metal hiding anywhere in the system and just flushing the system may not get them out. You need to break the system down in order to flush, under pressure, the different sections in both directions. If the desiccant bag inside of the receiver/dryer has ruptured the entire system could be full of tiny little resin beads that could have caused the compressor failure and all of them have to be removed. Thats why you need to replace the receiver/dryer when ever you open the system.

After cleaning I always add a high side filter in the line between the compressor and the condenser to catch any beads that may be left behind. These filters a small and inexpensive and there is plenty of room on most vehicles to locate one easily. I also follow the lead of most appliance refrigeration techs and give the vacuum pump plenty of time to do it's job of removing all of the moisture from the system. Its not unusual for them to let the vacuum pump run overnight or even 24 hours or more! to make sure it has had time to boil all of the moisture out. I've seen automotive techs just pour the new oil onto the end of an a/c line and let it sit there while they finish up connecting the rest of the components then run the vacuum pump for 15 to 20 minutes before adding the freon! I can assure you that the oil has absorbed a lot of moisture and it takes a lot longer than that to boil it out! Again I like the refrigeration tech's method better. They reconnect the system, then evacuate it with the vacuum pump. Let it set for as long as they can but at least a couple of hours to check for any vacuum loss caused by leaks. Then they use an injector and let the oil get sucked into the system by the vacuum. That way the oil has minimum exposure to the atmosphere where it can absorb moisture. After that they start installing the new freon before the engine is started so they do not have to jump the pressure switch very often.

If you have access to recovery equipment that cam remove any contamination and all of the old dirty broken down oil from the freon then by all means use it and reuse the freon. If you have doubts about the equipment then you will have to decide if you would rather risk venting the gas into the atmosphere and having an agent from the EPA walking into your shop and catching you or suffocating from breathing contaminated air because you released a few little cans of freon or using new refrigerant in your rebuilt system."

Where the !&&* do you get the spacer that sits behind the AC clutch?!?!? Apparently when I try installing the AC clutch, the clutch hits the tensioner pulley and it leaves a 1” gap in between the mounting holes. Like what in the !&&*. Now I'm looking all around town at these junk yards for one because Ford doesn't sell it. 1 car that I've taken apart for the Ford escape had it so far. I'm 11 cars deep in finding this bracket but only 1 vehicle had it. This is a true pain.