The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline PS on waterpump pulley?

Hello all!

New to the forums, but looking through them I feel this would be the right place to ask my first question.

So, I'm upgrading to PowerSteering; the Netherlands just isn't that big and everybody wants to park their car in a small space. A '56 1/2 ton truck just isn't that small and with 225 tires on the front...you get the picture ;)

Now, the engine is not an original, it's a 1970ish 350CID and it fits, rather tightly in some spots I would say. The PS pump does fit in place, but in order to mount a 3 fold pulley on the crank (the PS would normally use the 3rd pulley on the crank), I would need to cut out part of the frame. Doable, but not something I fancy really.
The question then is, why couldn't I use the water pump pulley (it's a double pulley, closest one already used for alternator)? What would go wrong? Any ideas?

Thanks!
Peter.

I know they run aftermarket air conditioner compressors off a double pulley on the alternator on the original 235 engines.

John

The belt tension will add to the load on the bearing inside the water pump. This could shorten its life. "If you've already changed to an aftermarket water pump with the beefier bearing, it may not matter.

regards,
Leon

Thanks. So I could actually make it work to my benefit: change the alternator position to the passenger side (easier) and use the PS pump on the waterpump to counter the force from the alternator belt?

How about difference in diameter of the pulleys (waterpump v.s. crank). Any influence of that on the PS pump functioning and/or perhaps resulting performance on PS itself?

regards,
Peter.

I think you will be ok from a pulley size standpoint. PS pumps have pressure reliefs (I believe) as they must content with constant varying rotational speeds.

Also, to Whitelightning: Most, if not all, aftermarket air conditioner compressors have the double groove pulley and the alternator is driven from the compressor, not the other way around.

Likely I'm remembering wrong, but just throwing out a possible concern, besides the power steering pump, you'll need to change the pitman arm, won't you? Ebay has lots of various priced power steering pump brackets, I'm putting together a 350 right now and ordered a set yesterday.

I'm confused what you're talking about with a "3-fold" pulley? Most I've seen use 2-groove pulleys. One belt for alt/water pump to the crank, one for the power steering. Or some combination thereof.

I would run anything directly off of the water pump, because then you need to be concerned with the pulley size you're driving off of. Pulley sizes were determined based on driving off of the crank pulley, so you need to keep that in mind.

@DavidF: thanks, I'll check that, the pressure relief.

@lefty1: thanks for the input, I got the gearbox including pitman arm already.

@46gmcpu: I guess I should have said 3-groove pulley. Right now it's a 2 groove, however the front most is very narrow and I wonder wether it would even qualify as a pulley. In that sense I would need to replace the pulley anyway if I was to attach the PS to the crank.
Your other remark exactly points to my uncertainty: I've seen pictures on the net of many different setups which run of the crank pulley and/or the waterpump pulley, but nowhere why it would be alright to just change the setup form "regular".

regards,
Peter

It's likely your 350 engine has the long water pump. It could be possible to install a short water pump and use the pulleys and brackets associated with that set up. The standard 350 crank pulleys are fairly deep which pushes the pulleys closer to the front cross member. The pulleys that came with earlier (283/327) engines are flatter up against the balancer and may solve your problem. You would need to match up all the pulleys for the water pump, PS, & crankshaft along with the related brackets.
Fred

Fred,

Should have mentioned it has a short waterpump already. Your remarks on the 350 crank pulleys are my problem, but I"ll check the sizes of the 283/327 how far these would extend. Thanks for the tip!

Peter.