We had a little open time on the shop 5.3 so I took another look at an easier way to fit the LS1 intake on the truck engine. On the street rod we were working on, we moved the idler pulley by welding a new pad on the truck accessory bracket. This time we designed a bolt-on bracket to make it a little easier to reproduce.


Here's the newly designed bracket:


Here's what I cut off of the factory bracket:


Getting clearance for the radiator hose outlet turns out to be the hard part:


I substituted the F-body pump to get the needed clearance:


But the belt placement on the F-body pulley looks dangerously close to the front edge:


It looks like in order to be on the safe side, the truck pump needs to be retained and have the hose nipple pulled out, and relocated to the front boss normally used by the F-body pump. I think I'll try that the next time the engine is open and see what it looks like.

 

Very nice work John. That's very similiar to the bracket I was thinking of making except I just didn't make it.

Instead of rerouting the outlet on a truck pump what if you put the truck water pump pulley on a Fbody pump? I really haven't looked at what makes up the extra length difference of the truck pump so I'm just throwing that possibility out there.

 

That would be a possibility. I haven't looked at doing anything with the pressed on pulleys. Either swapping to the truck pulley, or if the F-body pulley could be pulled about .25" and still be on safely, that would do it too.

 

Yeah, if it could be pulled out some that would be good. Then maybe pin it to be on the safe side.

Also, if you look down the forum page there is a thread about putting on a meziere water pump with pics. It looks like the pulley on that pump extends out further so it's a possibility for the intake swap also.

 

Do you think it would work if you used the truck pump's nipple on the F-car pump? I have a car pump on my LS1 and access to an LS1 intake and fuel rails from someone that went to a Weiand.

Is that bracket going to be made available to the general public? Any idea on price?

Hmmm.......

 

Also, www.streetandperformance.com has water necks in various offsets for the LS1. Check out their .pdf catalog...it's on page 58.

Wonder if one of those 'necks could be adapted to fit up top instead of it's normal locale?

 

Didn't that one guy put a smaller diameter pulley on the tensioner, allowing the belt to ride a little higher above the outlet?

 

XLR, it looks like if you do what HIGHGMC did with putting the smaller fbody tensioner pully on where the truck idler was it might have enough room to clear an LS1/LS6/LSX manifold....i'm looking to maybe run one myself pretty soon...who knows.


P.S. i probably already know the answer to this, but i'm tired....why can't we just switch to the corvette, or f-body accessory setup to gain clearance for the manifold?

Speartech...is that bracket going to be available to the public???

 

They sit inward about 5/8" compared to the truck accessories. You can run them, but you need a 5/8" long threaded spacer and 5/8" longer bolts to make the LS1 acc. push outward to line things up with the crank pulley. Or, you could just run an F-body balancer and not have to spacer things.

PS. the 'Vette acc. are even closer to their block than the F-body acc.

 

What is the hp gain with this being the only change.