[Vic1947]

Found a useful way to avoid bodywork by sorting out the brackets needed to mount the accessories. The Vintage Air setup came with it's own bracket whose placement was non-negotiable, so I started with it. First thing I ran into was the mounting tab meant for the front intake bolt. Since I'm using Vortec heads, the tab was at the wrong angle and position. The solution was to relocate the tab to the upper inner hole on the front of the cylinder head. Out came the bandsaw and welder and presto-change-o, I now have a tab at 90 degrees to the original. The Vortec intake bolts have a max torque of 15 ft. lbs. so using that boss was a non-starter.

Next up was the alternator. Since the AC compressor now occupies the space where Sparky originally sat, the most convenient fix was to rotate the alternator 180 degrees so the adjuster bracket was on the bottom instead of the top. This meant I had to fabricate an adjuster, which I did by slicing off the curved slotted portion of the top bracket and scabbing on some material so it would mount on two bosses protruding from the water pump. I haven't decided if I will keep it as is or machine one from some billet stock I have laying around. We'll see.

Lastly, the power steering pump needed some fine tuning. I remembered from when I took it off there was a funky spacer involved and a bracket that didn't seem quite right. Sure enough, the bracket was for the stock AC compressor and its only purpose was as a 1/4" spacer for the top hole of the PS pump bracket. When assembled like the PO had done, there was no provision for the third hole used to triangulate and steady the pump. So I removed the bracket, sliced off what I needed, put a slot in it for adjustment and made two spacers to properly line up the pulley groove with the drive groove on the harmonic balancer. It's now solid as a rock.

All that remains to be done is remove all the brackets, detail the edges, etc. and take them to Detray Plating to be chromed. While they're out, I'll paint the alternator and PS pulleys the body color and the PS pump the engine color. Will post up pics when it all goes back together.