Serpentine Accessory Belt/Pulleys?

That's a good question, I'm pretty certain I've seen some serpentine belt set-ups in Panteras. I'd be interested too in knowing the details. I haven't done this myself, but I can at least mention the one "snag" in doing this with a Pantera is that a 351C mounted in a Pantera chassis requires a smaller diameter crank pulley to clear the frame. For instance the set-up in the picture below wouldn't work in a Pantera.

There are lots of threads regarding this conversion over at the Clevelands Forever Forum, to find them just type "serpentine belt" into their search engine.

-G

Thanks for the response George. Yeah i've seen a few random setups online, but not in panteras, but figured I would ask the Pantera crowd before I dug into my box of 5.0 Pulley and underdrive sets. I'm hoping for another answer as well since you see people with aftermarket high flow pumps etc. The one thing I've learned with water pumps and the use of underdrive pulleys is they can be more hassle than they are worth. Underdriving and overdriving water pumps can create ill effects with coolant dwell time in the radiator thereby creating problems in an otherwise taxed cooling system in our cars. Wondering if people have had any luck changing the speed of their water pumps with the crank/wp pulley ratio being different. Would be interested to hear from people who have no cooling issues and if they are running the factory vbelt pulleys/ratio or something else.

I'll get my box out tonight and start measuring diameters to compare to the factory vbelt setup.

For what it's worth - I adapted a March serpentine pulley kit to my winsor - I think it was MCH-30100. Had to fabricate a bracket for the head and use a Ford Motorsport pulley spacer on the balancer but otherwice no issues with clearence and cooling. These aluminum kits are SO much lighter than the original steel pulleys and has worked flawless.

Many years ago Steve Wilkinson machined and sold a complete package to do just this. Contact him, he may be able to assist.

Hustler,

I know that this is not a true "serpentine" system but it was sold for sometime by Hall Pantera. Here it was mounted on my 351c for my Pantera.

There was video of a black group 4 with yellow racing stripes running 180's that has this setup on the forum somewhere recently. If I remember correctly, this was a car being built for the track. In the video they had the doghouse cover off and were running the motor for the first time.

Good luck and let us know what you find out with a true serpentine system.

quote:

was video of a black group 4 with yellow racing stripes running 180's that has this setup on the forum somewhere recentl

Sorry forgot to check in, been busy taking a part the motor as well as holidays. Garvino, interesting pic, looks more like a gilmer drive setup than a serp, but looks like hall had all the pulleys setup for one drive belt vs the two. Very neat, including the gated alt and crank pulleys, that wasn't cheap to make. I had a similar drive pulley on teh crank for a paxton novi 2000 cog belt setup and it wasn't cheap to have custom made Probably in about 3 weeks I should have the heads back and i will have buttoned things up and will be able to start monkeying with the pulley arrangement, so will keep you guys updated if I come up with a solution to use a 5 Liter aluminum underdrive setup or something cheap like that. I don't really care about looks since nobody sees that part of the engine anyway, more about function.

The gilmer drive is probably the best since it would seem you wouldn't have to run a lot of tension therefore less accessory drive power loss vs the v-belt or serpentine.

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.

Hustler,

My belt set-up is the Gilmer system sold by Hall Pantera. Your right on the expensive part. I do not know what it cost Hall to make, but I think the receipt shows $1700 on my end.

I really like the looks of and the sound of the Gilmer set-up. However, I ended up removing the Gilmer belt set-up and doing a bulkhead reduction instead. I think I am little OCD because the passenger seat not being able to move all the way against the firewall drove me crazy. I also wanted to give my wife some more room.

I have toyed with trying to modify the Gilmer set-up for one of my other cars but I have to many irons in the fire at the moment. So there it sits on the shelf with all my other car parts that I have collected over the years.

Devin

Here's a pic of my KRC setup. Crank pulley is 4 3/4". WP is 3 3/4". Powermaster alternator pulley is 2". Been running problem free since install.

Side view

crank pulley

Jason that's a nice set-up. The 4-3/4" crank pulley sounds Pantera friendly, I'm going to have to take a measurement now. Thanks for contributing!

-G

thanks for pictures, i will be in a better place to take some measurements in a few weeks after i button things back up.

If you want more pics, etc PM me....JP

Most serpentine belt drive setups need a water pump that rotates the opposite direction from stock, while Gilmer-belt drives use the std rotation direction. Since Windsors came stock with serpentines, reverse-rotation water pumps are also stock for later years. Not so with the 351-C.... and the C & W pumps do not interchange. Massive overheating also accompanies running any water pump backwards.
I may have a setup coming that allows a serpentine belt drive AND a bulkhead reduction setup (or even a perfectly flat firewall!) in the near future. Watch your Newsletter.

Jack - I'll be interested to see what you come up with. I'm finishing up a serpentine setup that I plan will accomplish a few things. My checklist included 1) serpentine setup 2) Bulkhead reduction 3) 300 amp alternator 4) stock cleveland water pump 5) tensioner pulley 6) crank timing wheel. 7) include AC compressor. The pic is of the crankshaft pulley. Its off a Mustang and is a wee bit smaller than the stock Pantera pulley. The wheel is from a Ford Focus. There is an aluminum spacer I machined that holds it all together.

Thanks,

Chance Dorsey
Austin, TX

would be interested to see that setup too, if you need help posting pictures let me know.