On the left here is the layout of the pulleys in an Olds powered Cutlass
(Thanks to Dave Worthington aka Oldsranch for supplying the excellent art)

And on the right shows how the belts are typically routed on a stock "late" model engine:

If one doesn't have the A/C belt installed, all pull is to one side. This causes a problem with squeaky belts. Tighten the alternator and the power steering pump belt becomes loose. Compensate by re-tightening the p/s pump belt and now the alternator belt is loose. Get them both tighter than they should be and you end up with too much side load (shortening the life of the w/p bearing). The solution is to balance the tightness by having the A/C belt installed at the correct tension. Even if it is non-functional. Worked for me.

However, there is another solution. Fab (or find) a reverse rotation water pump and design some serpentine pulleys for the Olds V8 like one of the below (depending on your accessory arrangement):

There is no real way to avoid a coupla idlers on the "late" model routing. I will have to keep brainstorming to figure out the optimum way to do each pulley layout.

Dick Miller and a coupla others have done some new-style deep V-belt aluminum pulleys. Dick and March Performance also have a "serpentine" setup (two belts for the March setup), but no one (to my knowledge) has done a true one-belt serpentine setup w/reverse rotation water pump for SBO and BBO. The reverse rotation water pump seems to be the sticking point.

If I wanted to waste as much aluminum as possible, I could do the belt wrap "March style" like the below.	I think I will stick with this one.

Below shows the difference between the normal rotation pump and the reverse rotation diesel pump (thanks to Dave Worthington for these water pump pics).

The regular pump is on the left. Notice the water inlet is above the impeller centerline. On the right is the reverse rotation pump. Notice that the water inlet is below the impeller centerline:

Of course, the impeller has blades that are pitched in the opposite direction for the reverse rotation pump. The diesel pump will bolt right on any modern Olds small or big block. However the fan bolt pattern is different. It is off by 1/8" on all holes from a standard fan. This isn't bad since we are fabbing a new pulley, but your fan mount won't fit without modification or replacement with a diesel one.

Next step is to mock up at least one engine with all bracketry and accessories. I will get to that after that holidays.

Below are prelim pics of the engine that I will use as the mockup.

I have a friend who owns a machine shop and is willing to help me get these designed and fabbed in low production quantities. I say low production quantities since after a few hundred sets are sold, there will probably be no more market for them. We are going to price them for an initial run of 40 sets after the engineering is done on them and the prototypes are proven.

Check back for info about when they will become available. I estimate by end of spring 2007. Get a hold of me at joevitek {at} cfl-dot-rr-dot-com (format for the typical email string, I am avoiding spam)

This page last modified on:

December 20, 2006