68' Valiant 4 door
nice weather today so i actually popped the hood and got something done.
background: as i'm putting A/C back in the car, and going with r134 and a Sanden pump, i had decided to go with March pulleys. their setup runs the A/C and the power steering pump off the same belt. that's fine but i have manual steering. what March does is substitute a pulley with sealed bearings to use as an idler pulley. two problems with that, the few posts i found with others using this setup complain that the bearings from march are POS and don't spin very easy. my kit, ordered though summit, didn't even have the pulley. no big deal, summit is great and took care of it ASAP. of course when it shows up the bearings were completely locked up. i wasn't happy, but one post had bearing numbers to replace them. i figured this being a know problem i'd just r+r them myself instead of doing who knows how many returns. using my 20T harbor freight press i was almost unable to get the bearings out.
way too tight for this kind of press fit. and once the bearings are out they spin great, no problem. March is either using the wrong size bearing or not finishing the pulley to the right size :realcrazy: nice quality control. so i ended up honing the bore with emery cloth and pressed em' back in. works great now. the other issue: this is supposed to take the place of the power steering pump, but the pump has bolt holes that bolt to the brackets.
but the pulley is just a pulley, with bearings, and a hole thought the middle. no adapter brackets. no way to actually attach it to the power steering brackets. :BangHead:
so all that to say today i spent a couple hours and figured out how to hang this pulley and leave two of their brackets off.
now that that's sorted i was able to measure for the belt. once i get that i can work on getting everything lined up.