losing the power steering for drag car

[sweet03cobra]

I have a 302 carbed and the only assessories left on it are the water pump, alt and powersteering. I want to ditch the powersteerling and leave the other 2 on. Who sells a brackey for this and what size belt would I use? any ideas? Thanks

 

[jb89coupe]

Have you considered reversing your belt tensioner? That way, you won't need a bracket or dummy pulley where the power steering was. There are a few threads on how to do this, just search for tensioner reverse. I think that's what I'm going to do when I pick up a manual steering rack.

 

[crazypete]

The 1983 t-bird 302 uses the same exact water pump except it is forward rotation. Just transfer the pulley over (pulley needs some minor hole drilling) and have a fwd rotation system. It's what I did.

I took the alt off it's bracket and bolt the tail end into the head using a sleeve (swaybar connecting rod sleeve? Not sure where it came from, it was in my box-o-stangparts) as the spacer. Then I wedged 2 valvesprings inbetween the alternator casing and the WP elbow to tension the belt. Easy simple, lost a whole bunch of weight. The stock system has some really long bolt shaft thingy with threads on either end....think it came from the power steering side....this threads into the head and you drill the alkternator's case so the bolt slips through the original alternator lower bolt position. Then it pivots. You use the belt to pull on it and the springs to push.

 

[89MustangGX]

You could also go for one of those March tensioner rods -- that would clean it up and be pretty simple too.

 

[sweet03cobra]

I might have to go that route if this doesn't work.