I was just studying some pics I have of factory air cond,
 
now my question is after the battery tray is gone and the compressor sits somewhere there ,
 
is there enough room to run twin 45s and manifold ? as the air compressor is ok with a standard carb but that's upright

My Nephew ran aircon on his, he took off the mechanical fuel pump and ran an inline electric one so he could blank off the fuel pump mount and attach a made-up bracket to mount the ac compressor.  This was using the original compressor, quite big, as they were in the day.  These days you can get much smaller ones so shouldn't have a problem with twin carbs.  Did the car come with AC ie. Has the hole on the firewall for ac hoses to come through into the cabin?  If not I saw a setup where all the hoses were directed along the chassis rail on the passenger side, exited through the inner guard and entered the cabin through the inner footwell at the top near where the cable for the radio aerial comes into the cabin.   Len

Ok Len thanks for that info,
your right about the modern day compressor but I did not give a thought for the fuel pump as from pics I have seen
the original compressor looked real close to the distributor.
No the car did not have a/c before and running along the rail sounds good,
Jim

I've seen a couple of different compressor configurations. The one that you've described on the carb side with the battery in the boot and another on the exhaust side where the battery stays in the engine bay. Not sure if they changed at some point but they were made up of parts from a couple of different Ford models so it could have been what was on the shelf at the time.
I bought an engine from a TE Cortina a while back with the compressor on the exhaust side, clears my Genie extractors  but in the Escort it clashes (only just) with the brake booster. Eventually I'm going to use that one and move the mounts back by a few millimetres, one of those when I get around to it jobs.
I would have thought the compressor would clear the 45's they don't hang too much if any lower than the original manifold.
Out of interest you can still but the compressors new if you want to go down the originality route.
Cheers Drew