Hi everyone, I have a 1932 ford roadster with a 1991 ford 302. It has two v-belts, one for the alternator and one for the water pump. Just got back yesterday with my rebuilt alternator and also picked up two new belts as the alternator belt has quite a few cracks, and I don’t know how old it is. My question is on how to change the water pump belt. It is a 4 bolt pulley, and there is no tensioner. I don’t think these belts really can be stretched to fit over the pulley without removing it like a serpentine belt. So do I just remove the pulley, and if so how hard will it be to get it back on? Is this the correct procedure or is there another way? Thanks in advance!
Just goes around the crank and water pump? Odd I've never seen that before. I would say yea ya gotta remove the pump pully to change that belt.
That's how they do it in racing... not very friendly for the street. Take it apart and re-engineer a belt tightener of some kind and it will be much better.
Used to run my race motors with 1 belt, water pump to crank, no tensioner. I would remove the WP pulley, put belt in both pulley grooves, then slide WP pulley back on. Must have exactly the right size belt. EDIT: Howdy Montana1 You type faster than I do.
Hi, I bought the same size belt, the NAPA version instead of the gates that is on there now. My concern is that the tension on the new belt will make it very difficult to get the pulley back on correctly without somehow having to pry it back on.
You don't want to pry it back on. That will put unnecessary stress on the crank nose. Because you have a large amount of belt grip area on the pulleys when routing the belt this way, the belt doesn't need to be banjo sting tight. If you can't get the WP pulley back on by hand, the belt is too tight. It might take some pretty good hand and arm pressure to get it on, but I wouldn't use a pry bar.
If the belt covers close to 90 degrees of the pulley, it should be enough. I'd give it a try, if it slips when you have the belt tension on the alternator belt as it should be, then you might need to figure out how to get the other belt on. I'm assuming you did not build this car yourself...keep in mind that some times folks build cars in strange and mysterious ways, and things can be changed and work ok, or better. btw a new belt will lose some tension after it runs for a little while, then should stay the same for a long time. And getting the tension right can be tricky...I have a belt tension gauge, which really helps me know what's going on with fan belts.
Yeah. Just run the one belt. That's the way I have my 302 set up in my Shoebox Ford. No problems at all. Runs 160* all day long.
I have the same situation on my coupe. 350 SBC with a 2” Gilmer blower drive and like the OP’s engine I used a belt from the crank to water pump. Sort of a belt and suspenders thing, if I tossed the alternator belt I’d still be driving the w/p. jaw22w has it right.^^^
That would be the best solution and I believe 1981 F150 4X4, 302 came with tha pulley that you need. You can start by looking for one on that specific vehicle.
I can't believe you guys haven't seen this before. We used to do it on all our high rpm engines. We just derailed the belt on with the pulleys installed, the belt kinda rolled into the groove. Sometimes you would have to turn the crank a little to help. The idea was to have the water pump still working if you toss the generator/alternator belt. It worked great when you couldn't afford deep groove pulleys. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
I've seen it before, but I've also seen a lot of stock setups with one belt work for a long long time.
That's as much wrap as most OEM belt application one belt should work. With your old belts and stretch I doubt the crank to water pump belt was doing much.
It doesn't take much to turn the water pump without a mechanical fan. One belt for both water pump and the alternator should work fine. Just leave the other one on there. If it becomes a problem put a 2 groove pulley on the alternator and use 2 belts.
In my experience, if one belt breaks it often goes through the other one and either rolls it off or breaks it.
I figured out that if you don't use Gates belts, you don't have a stretching problem. Stick with Dayco.
Certainly a possibility but with the short belt on the inside groove it wasn't common among our hot rods. My old MGB with a 327/4 spd was a habitual belt tosser until I figured out how to align and mount the alternator closer in for a shorter belt. It always had the "safety belt" on the inside groove. It also had a cut down fan mounted to the balancer, a tossed belt always got shredded.
If it was a race car, then maybe the extra belt would be necessary? As for brands of belts stretching or not stretching on first use...my belt tension gauge has a range for "new belt" and a range for "used belt". When I put a new belt on, I set it for "new belt", then after it runs a while, it's in the "used belt" range. Don't matter what brand it is.
I checked my vintage '32 ford service manual but I am afraid it wasn't of much help, it only referenced SBC motors.
We always ran the single belt around the crank pulley and water pump pulley on race engines. The best way to put the WP pulley back on when installing it is to use a short stud in the WP snout to align the pulley/snout holes. 1 stud will do it. I put a screwdriver slot across the end of the stud to get it back out once a couple regular bolts were started. Really no reason to run that belt when you have an alternator unless it's for looks or bad wrap on the WP pulley. If you are close to 90* of wrap around the WP pulley you are good. If you were just kissing the WP pulley with the alt belt then it may be warranted. Only reason to run the crank/WP belt with the correct wrap is to cosmetically fill the unneeded pulley groves. Factory setups ran a single belt for years with no problems. SPark
VW Bugs had shims you could move around on one split pulley to adjust the belt tension. Back to the regularly scheduled topic.
I think my 390hp 427 in '69 Corvette had a belt from crank pulley to water pump, no tensioner. Unbolted water pump pulley to change belt (after removing other belts). Was a long time ago, memory may be faulty.
We went through a belt problem on a Detroit Diesel in a Louisville Ford truck. Installed a new set of 3 matched Gates belts. It threw them of in less than 50 miles. Put them back on and tightened them tighter and they still came off. Got another set and they did the same thing. Had the Gates rep come in and he checked tension with a gauge and alignment with a laser and thought we had them too tight. Set them to his specifications and threw them off in the shop. He called somebody who told him to go tighter and we did. We also checked tension daily but it still kept throwing belts. We ran the dealer out of the matched sets so one day it threw a set on the road and wrecked the belts. I had to grab a used set off another truck to get him back to the yard. When we got the new set we put them on the other truck and that one started throwing belts while the used belts stayed on the one that originally had the problem. The used belts were factory Motorcraft belts and the truck they were taken off had over 300,000 miles on it. The Gates rep suggested that we use the factory Ford Motorcraft belts for that application. The Ford dealer didn't stock Motorcraft belts but they had Dayco. We put them on and never had another problem. I've found the same thing with serpentine belts. If a Gates is used it has to be a size shorter or it will start to squeal as it stretches and loses tension. Maybe Gates has changed the materials they use in the intervening years but I haven't used a Gates belt for ten years.
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