'87 sag swap with stock bracket

[appy]

yes Virginia, there is a santa claus, the easter bunny is real, and with enough time and ingenuity, you CAN mate a saginaw pump to your stock bracket. Due to too many hours on the job; I don't have enough time to search for a bracket, and I'm either too broke or cheap to buy a new one, so I decided to see if I could make this happen. This was all done during my lunch hours, and breaktimes, at the shop. I didn't use anything fancy to do this, just a cutting torch, bandsaw, die-grinder and assorted bits for both steel and alum., a couple hole-saws, and a drill and bits. Here's how I did it.

My pump sh#t the bed, so here's what I started with


And here's the assy. I bought from a fellow FSB'er, complete with pump and line

Obviously, these aren't going to work, so here we go.

Gotta start somewhere, so I made a cardboard template of the mounting face of the pump.


Due to the different canister, a little trimming was in order to clear

Here you can see where I had to grind the bottom for the pump to clear the bracket. The yellow circles are where the sag bolt holes line up


Here is the pump with my adapter bolted onto the bracket. This pic shows how far off the bolts are, two just barely touch the aluminum.


Adapter, and amount of shimming required to get the height correct. The sag pump is about 5/8" longer than the ford, so these were neccesary to line up with the belt


Here are the two adapters I made. I replaced the washers with small pieces of tubing and welded them in place. On its reverse side, are two more spacers to fit to the pump(the four mounting holes on the pump are at different heights). The round plate goes on the outside of the bracket to give the bolts more support, and spread the load of the bolts.



And here they are, bolted down. Had to do a little experimenting with different types of bolts, as the pulley makes contact with the one on the lower left. I ended up using stainless socket head cap screws(what we have in stock) and machining down the heads to clear.







I waited until this rig was field tested before I wrote this up. After last weekends thrashing, I can say that I am very pleased with it.
Before shot:


Mounted and working wonderfully. Yes, it is tilted more than I'd like, but, with enough fluid in there, its not a problem

[Lambo]

wow that looks great. awsome job

[plug ugly]

pretty cool. But Im curious, how long did that actually take you to make?

[appy]

thanks, I've probably got 8-10 hours in it. If I had it all to do over, I would've searched for the right bracket, but I can't afford to take time off of work and drive around town. It was more of an experiment, just to see if it could be done.

[badass1tonf100]

very creative

[kf4amu]

In case anyone cares, I did the same thing on my 89 460 EFI motor. These brackets are much different than the small blocks, and a 2 week search for a van 460 bracket (saginaw) was futile.

Actually I paid someone to do it in his garage. And he built a mount for the York while he was in there.





The link if you care.
http://www.supermotors.org/vehicles/...=16817#content

[mkwalt]

Great write up!!!

I wish I had the tools/resources to fab something like this. How do those 35's turn now?

[appy]

They do turn a little bit easier, but not as well as I thought they would. It might just be the junkyard pump though? It's worth it not to hear that damn whine though.

[Chuck]

Nice work! (Nice work on that York compressor mount bracket too, KF, I'm going to have to do something like that in the future).

An interesting piece of info. Contrary to popular belief, I found out last week that for certain years, the driver's side 351 and 302 brackets are identical. I picked up a Saginaw bracket off a 351W van when I was looking at doing the 351 swap, and will be using that bracket on my 302 when I throw it back in the truck with the new Saginaw. I don't remember the year of the van I pulled it from, but both the van Saginaw bracket and my original 302 truck bracket were cast and drilled with the lower water pump holes necessary to fit both the 351 and 302.

Maybe I'm the only one this was a suprise to, since I was told the driver's side brackets from the 351 and 302 didn't interchange, but they definitely do. I can probably get some pics next weekend if anyone wants to see this particular version of the bracket. If this is old news, then nevermind.

[bigbroncojeff]

glad to see it working...

[Redwagon]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Nice work! (Nice work on that York compressor mount bracket too, KF, I'm going to have to do something like that in the future).

An interesting piece of info. Contrary to popular belief, I found out last week that for certain years, the driver's side 351 and 302 brackets are identical. I picked up a Saginaw bracket off a 351W van when I was looking at doing the 351 swap, and will be using that bracket on my 302 when I throw it back in the truck with the new Saginaw. I don't remember the year of the van I pulled it from, but both the van Saginaw bracket and my original 302 truck bracket were cast and drilled with the lower water pump holes necessary to fit both the 351 and 302.

Maybe I'm the only one this was a suprise to, since I was told the driver's side brackets from the 351 and 302 didn't interchange, but they definitely do. I can probably get some pics next weekend if anyone wants to see this particular version of the bracket. If this is old news, then nevermind.

really interested...would like to swap to a saginaw but if i can use the same bracket it would be great!

[kf4amu]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Nice work! (Nice work on that York compressor mount bracket too, KF, I'm going to have to do something like that in the future).


Maybe I'm the only one this was a suprise to, since I was told the driver's side brackets from the 351 and 302 didn't interchange, but they definitely do. I can probably get some pics next weekend if anyone wants to see this particular version of the bracket. If this is old news, then nevermind.

Thanks for the compliment! I felt smart when it was done

I was under the impression all small block brackets were the same?? Anybody got pics showing a difference between the 302 and 351 bracket?

-Will

[reptillikus]

If i recall correctly,there was one hole on the bottom that wasnt used on the sag bolted to my 351 (near one that is used), almost like it was supposed to line up with something else. That could have be whats he's talking about. Its been a while though; ill have to go look at mine in the a.m.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by kf4amu

Thanks for the compliment! I felt smart when it was done

I was under the impression all small block brackets were the same?? Anybody got pics showing a difference between the 302 and 351 bracket?

-Will

I've seen a couple of flavors of the serpentine brackets (not even counting the Mustang brackets, which are completely different from everything else too). For one, you can see up top that Appy's original bracket is a two-piece job designed to mount a different A/C compressor (uses bolts parallel to the compressor shaft, whereas mine has four bolts perpendicular to the compressor shaft like yours). If you look at the pic of the other bracket that came with Appy's new pump:



It has the down-bolt A/C like yours and mine, and the same cylinder head mounting pattern if memory serves correctly, but there is only one bolt hole at the bottom to go on the water pump stud. Assuming this one came off a 302, if it were one of the dual mount brackets like the two I have it would have an additional "alternate" water pump stud hole down and to the left to fit the 351's increased firedeck height (the cylinder head is 1.3 inches further out on the 351W).