Reply to "Serpentine Accessory Belt/Pulleys?"

If one were to spend time on pulleys and belts on the Pantera, time spent wisely would be to move the assembly closer to the engine so that you could reduce the size of the bubble into the cabin?

Good luck on doing that with serpentine belts and frankly, what's the point of it?

If you look at the stock set up, you can move the a/c belt to the outside groove of the crank pulley, push the alternator in to the inner pulley groove, and have a new water pump pulley made inexpensively ($125). This will move the entire assembly closer to the block by 1-1/4" and if you look you will see that you can now remove the bubble, or most of it and now only need a small bubble for just the nose of the water pump.

Now if you want to go further, it is possible to cut the input shaft of the water pump the same amount, move the pulley flange in closer to the block, make the corresponding special new pulley for it and wind up with a flat engine cover. This I did not do.

I was told that Ford wouldn't even let Detomaso change the valve covers without voiding the Ford warranty on the engine. Ford really should have built a special Pantera water pump for the cars and changed the ridiculous bubble on the engine cover. That was absolutely asinine on them in my opinion.