power steering

[insomniac391]

got my power steering belt off, can i burn the gears up by driving the car using muscle only?

[Lincolnmania]

it is going to take a toll on the steering column and the steering shafts......they werent meant to turn without power assist........first thing to go will be the rag joint.

[insomniac391]

ok thanks

[Archangel]

Which car you got the PS belt off? Panthers share a belt between the PS, WP, and the alt, so if you lose that one you'd only have battery power, and considering you do burn up a ton of energy with the sparkplugs you really won't be driving much far

[insomniac391]

Which car you got the PS belt off? Panthers share a belt between the PS, WP, and the alt, so if you lose that one you'd only have battery power, and considering you do burn up a ton of energy with the sparkplugs you really won't be driving much far

nah its the caprice, its got hooker headers but its still set up for the power steering bracket that came with the manifold, so the pulley is cocked a little, and the belt flipped off, so i cut it off till i can replace the bracket.

[1987cp]

So Craprieces have one belt to the alternator and water pump, and another for the power steering pump?

[86VickyLX]

So Craprieces have one belt to the alternator and water pump, and another for the power steering pump?

Yeah, some models have belts from accesories that just drive other accessories. Like 3 or 4 belts

[insomniac391]

its a crate engine, the power steering uses the same pulley as the alternator but has its own belt.

[gadget73]

Lots of companies did silly things with V belts. Only so many spots on the crankshaft so you'll find belts driving from accessory to accessory and things like that. GM with their accessory bracket nonsense is really bad for that. It makes the water pumps easy to change, but finding the magic combination of tiny little brackets that go to the exhaust manifolds, intake manifolds, head holes, and wherever else they go can be frustrating.

And yeah, you'll take out the stuff in the steering column. Its also just generally a bitch to steer a power assist box without the pump. If it was a proper manual box you'd be OK with it. Those have a lot less internal spring force and more gear reduction so its actually possible to drive one without having Hulk Hogan's arms.

[1987cp]

its a crate engine, the power steering uses the same pulley as the alternator but has its own belt.

I'd missed this about getting a crate engine. Did you mention in the other thread which one you're getting?

[insomniac391]

I'd missed this about getting a crate engine. Did you mention in the other thread which one you're getting?

sorry I'm wrong, just went to my favorite mechanic in MD and he told me that this is a 350 taken out of a truck with miss matched pulleys from the original car, so I need to get an entirely new pulley system. He said the only company that makes the system i need is March and that it will cost about 300, plus labor brings the total to $905, sound right Scott?

He also said the car is fine to drive as long as there is power steering in the pump cause it should lubricate everything.

[gadget73]

The steering box won't fail, its the stuff between the steering wheel and the box. Its a whole lot harder to steer, so all those parts get stressed a whole lot more. 20 year old rubber rag joints aren't that strong to begin with. Load them up a lot more than normal, and suddenly you've got massive slop in the steering wheel because the rubber came apart.

Why not just get the stock pulley and bracket arrangement that belongs on the car, or the one that belongs on the truck the engine came from? As long as its matched, it doesn't matter all that much what it came from. No need for expensive aftermarket stuff when a trip to the junkyard will get you all you need. 305 and 350 engines are the same for bracket purposes, and there are lots of 305 Caprices and trucks.

[Lincolnmania]

sorry I'm wrong, just went to my favorite mechanic in MD and he told me that this is a 350 taken out of a truck with miss matched pulleys from the original car, so I need to get an entirely new pulley system. He said the only company that makes the system i need is March and that it will cost about 300, plus labor brings the total to $905, sound right Scott?

He also said the car is fine to drive as long as there is power steering in the pump cause it should lubricate everything.

sounds real high mang........i'm not a chevy expert, but i have worked on tons of rwd gm products, even ones after an amatuer engine swap with mismatched pulleys........ i dont think you need march pulleys............just need to see what you got going on and make some corrections....prob will involve a trip to ez pull.......bring it up here, we will take care of it for you.

[Archangel]

He said the only company that makes the system i need is March and that it will cost about 300, plus labor brings the total to $905, sound right Scott?

He also said the car is fine to drive as long as there is power steering in the pump cause it should lubricate everything.

I'll be honest with you here - $600 in just labor is too high for this job. As for the pulley system itself - a 350 engine is a 350 engine, as long as the accessories holes in the heads are there there is not much difference in the way the car brackets bolt up to the engine as compared to the truck brackets. The type of exhaust manifold can come into play, yes, but there are ways around it. There are also two water pumps available for these engines, a long and a short one, which as you can imagine does make for some difference in the bracketry, but still all that swaps over just fine if you got the right parts. So really the issue boils down to finding the right car in the right junkyard, getting the parts off it, and bolting them up to your engine. If things need to get spaced out, this is easily done, for instance not too long ago I moved my whole power steering pump and associated brackets 3/4" forward of its factory location, so I can line its pulley with a different groove on the crank pulley, thus vacating the middle groove of the crank pulley for a belt I needed to drive something else on thee other side of the engine - stuff like that is very doable, and also quite affordable, there's entirely no need for dumping a huge amount of cash on a bling-bling pulley setup (which is what March makes) when you can do it all with factory parts and spend said money elsewhere, say on headers or something...

[Archangel]

Also, about the steering column, Thain is right - without the power steering you'll be putting a whole lot more load on these parts than they should be subjected to, and while they were designed to handle that kind of load (in case of emergency situations) that was like 20 years ago, age and mileage do take their toll on the parts - rag joint will likely be weakened by now, also the U-joints wear out, and if you have tilt wheel there's another bunch of stuff waiting to fail on your right there. All this said, can you please take some pictures of what you're working with, and post them here, it's hard to give advice even on patch jobs without knowing for sure what we're staring with - I'll try to at least get your PS going till you have the proper parts sorted out for making everything else work right too.