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UNCLE!! Please help with Power Steering conversion
Hey all.... So much for wishful thinking that the addition to power steering was gonna be easy peasy......
I ordered the brackets from Long Island Corvette and they also sent a parts diagram..
The issue is the PS pump does not want to sit square down in the bracket and it is coming up from the back bottom, which is a slotted position. Additionally the pump will not move along the length of the adjustment slot.... It appears to me that the stud on the back of the pump is hitting the bracket... Pics included below. Any advice is appreciated!!
You might try taking some of the spacer washers out of the bolt holding the bracket to the front header hole ... I don't have my bracket spaced out that far from the head. In fact, leave that fastener out altogether and see if the bracket lines up better and the pump swivels in the slot better. I'm thinking you may have pulled the bracket down and away too far with the header spacers, and have the bracket out of center with the pump pivot axis. On one of my BB's I wound using a 12-point reduced head bolt on the header, and left off connecting that part of the bracket to the block. Wrench clearance to tighten a nut or bolt is a PITA with headers and PS ... Good luck!
John A, 67L88Vette
John, When I first tried to set it up, I bolted on the bracket where it ties to the front of the head and both measured and adjusted how many washers (I'll machine a bushing in the end) it took to both bolt into the front of the head and end up flush with the header mount. That said, I'll head back to the shop tomorrow and take the header side out like you suggest but how do you have sufficient strength to keep everything tight?
NoWhere, I get your point, but I backed into the the spacers as I indicated above. Not having stock exhaust manifolds and using the headers is a lot narrower, so with that stud, you have to put some spacers in there to compensate for the lack of material in a stock manifold. I'm gonna head up tomorrow and just take that section back out as John suggests and see what happens...
John, When I first tried to set it up, I bolted on the bracket where it ties to the front of the head and both measured and adjusted how many washers (I'll machine a bushing in the end) it took to both bolt into the front of the head and end up flush with the header mount. That said, I'll head back to the shop tomorrow and take the header side out like you suggest but how do you have sufficient strength to keep everything tight?
The above is correct. With headers it’s going to be trial and error. You’re going to have everything on and off several times to figure out what you need for spacers. Also looking at your other thread about the water pump and crank pulley’s I would start with all the correct original or repo Pulleys. The power steering an alternator will be the biggest challenges. There are going to be times that you wished you had three hands.
68, I wish I had 3 hands that grew shrunk at will.... with my aftermarket A-Arms and the PS rack, I can't get my hand up there without cutting something....
68, I wish I had 3 hands that grew shrunk at will.... with my aftermarket A-Arms and the PS rack, I can't get my hand up there without cutting something....
My 66 big block was even more crowded in the engine compartment as it had A/C and PS.
What's in your bottom pic looks correct. The stud is supposed to pass through the adjuster slot on the combination pump/altenrator adjuster bracket, and the captured nut part of the stud should be inside the pump bracket as shown. There should be a nut on the same stud on the other side of the adjuster slot and yes, getting to that nut to lock it down is a giant PITA. IIRC, the other side of the pump is held in place by the stud shown in your lower pic and a bolt that passes through the front of the pump bracket. If those holes in the pump bracket line up with the bolt and stud on the PS pump then it's in correctly. I think 68 Hemi is right about trial and error to get the right spacing between the adjuster bracket and the front of the LH cylinder head. The adjuster bracket is shaped so that it rests on the surface of the exhaust manifold. The header flange is much thinner than that part of the exhaust manifold casting so some kind of spacer is needed. The factory setup uses a stud with captured nut through that same hole in the exhaust manifold and a nut to hold the bracket in place. My '65 NOM BB had headers and I used a 3/8 thread stud, a nut to hold down the header, a stack of washers (3 or 4 of em IIRC) over that nut, and a nut and lock washer to hold the bracket in place over the stack of washers. ope that helps.
AV, that sounds like what I have done..... I'm headed up to the shop in a couple hours and I'll play with the number of spacers I have to see if that changes things and update the thread
You sure did. It seemed like the OP was also not sure whether the pump was correctly attached to the "cradle" PS pump bracket.
well I am not sure if his PS pump is correct and mounted correct either. but you must fix one thing at a time and I can see the cradle bracket is mounted incorrectly for starters.
Echo echo..... So, I'm up here at the shop and on your advice, I took out the stud on the header and clearly the pump moves better, but the top of the pump is still kicked out towards the front of the car, tilting the pulleys...... If you look closer at the pic, you can see that the stud in the back of the pump is hitting on the bracket I got from Long Island Corvette (so I am assuming its made correctly and it clearly looks just like all the pics i see online), and if you look closer, you can see that the pump body is also hitting on the bottom of the bracket.......
Now up top, you can see that the PS bracket is sandwiched between the Alt bracket, as prescribed in every direction I see, and I even moved the alignment around to no avail.
If I push the PS bump rearward it does go and seem to line up, I'm back to thinking its either the stud should be replaced by a bolt and or the bracket needs to be bent....
The stud is correct and needs to stay. You need to figure out the difference between stock manifolds and your header flange. That will be trial and error if you don’t have the stock manifolds
12-15-2018, 08:58 PM
UNCLE!! Please help with Power Steering conversion
