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17 Dec 01

Version 1

17 Dec 01

Well, it's been a while since my last update. Like a year or more. I ended up around the beginning of this year putting the turbo back on as I needed to drive the truck. The SC installation stalled at the point of making some pulleys for the drive belt. Without a means to do that, I decided to put the SC on hold and run the turbo for a while longer.

Around June-July or so, I had the turbo off again to replace a rubber water line that had softened and kept leaking. While it was off, I took the time to make a header flange out of ½" mild steel in preparation of making a new turbo manifold for upgrading to a T3 or T3/TO4 hybrid turbo. I actually got the flanges made and accumulated the rest of the material needed, as well as a used T3 for development work, but the SC kept nagging at me. By late July, I decided to look at getting that installed again.

I started by looking at the pulleys again. I had really planned on waiting until I could get a lathe large enough to turn my own pulleys, but I ended up doing some calculations to figure out sizes needed, I made a few trips to the junkyard to see if I could find anything to adapt. As I turned out, I did find a couple that would work and I was able to adapt them to my crank and power steering while making them turn true. It actually worked out much better than I had anticipated.

I then started looking at the tilting bracket I had made for v1 of the installation. I decided that it wasn't going to work very well. The big problem is that it's mounted up high, and there's no place for a bracket up there. The mount points for the bracket are down low on the block, and the SC was sitting on top of a very long bracket. I just couldn't make it stiff enough to hold the SC steady. There was also a problem with how to route the intake hose to the throttle body at the rear of the SC. There's wasn't much room.

The new bracket mounts the SC body quite a bit lower, is made of much heavier ¼" and 3/8" material, uses the 3 mounting holes up high at the front of the head (where the smog pump bracket bolts to) and is heavy triangulated. This bracket turned out very stiff and is several times better than the 1st one. It actually does most of the holding by itself using the big bolt hole at the front center of the SC body, but I do have an arm that drops down to the engine mount at the back of the SC and one off the side going to the valve cover. These don't really hold any weight, but serve to hold the back end of the SC steady.

The most tedious part was to get both the new pulleys (crank and power steering) and the SC pulley all aligned so that the belt will run true and not walk off. I spent a lot of time with the tape measure, level gauge and carpenters square to true them up. They look very well aligned to the eye with the belt on. The true test will be when I start it up though.

The bracket also mounts the belt tensioner as you can see in the pics, and I also incorporated mounts for a large, 130 amp Ford alternator (a slightly used pull-off from a place that does van conversions) and a couple extra idler pulleys needed to use it. I plan on switching the vehicle over to using this new alternator, and keeping the original stock alt in place and wiring it up to work as both an on-board welder and as a backup alternator. I don't *need* the extra alt in place though. With a shorter belt, I can run the SC fine without it and it's extra idlers.

For the SC inlet and outlet, I ended up fabbing some pieces out of sheet metal. The SC inlet is steel and it mounts the throttle body at the back of the SC body. I have an elbow that fits the TB nicely and runs to the filter on the fender. The outlet side of the SC I did in aluminum. It's pretty ugly though, so no pics. I *really* need to practice welding AL. Finally, there is an adapter bolted to the intake manifold where the TB was stock. This is just a flange with a piece of 2.5" exhaust pipe welded to it for the hose from the SC outlet to attach to.

As of now, I think I have everything needed to put the SC on and run it. I'm currently putting it together without the SC though as it's due for smog testing this month. This will also give me a chance to clean any grit that may have worked it's way into the SC rotors, and I can paint all the brackets and fabbed pieces as well. Still need a stupid EGR tube though. That's the only thing holding me up at the moment.

Created by: Dan Houlton
This page was last updated on 14 Apr 2004
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