I don’t recall an idler on the passenger side. The alternator swings to tension the belt. My car is an automatic and even though it is a California car it doesn’t have the smog pump. As a manual does yours have the smog pump? Is that on the passenger side?
I reread the topic and you don’t mention what you have as a voltage regulator right now. The reason I ask is because if you are running the mechanical style regulator, you are getting charge power in steps or pulses rather than smooth adjustments. If you are noticing oddities with your fuel injection system, irregular voltage could cause that.
I don’t know the specifics of your Holley EFI system, but typically the controllers that energize coils use the battery voltage they get on their largest power input terminal without regulation. With modern charging systems this voltage is smooth enough to give consistent results. When the voltage becomes irregular, the results become irregular. Garbage in, garbage out.
I was reminded of this when my diesel pickup started running like crap. I was expecting the dreaded LB7 fuel injector replacement festivities. A few hundred miles later I noticed voltage fluctuation. In that case it was the alternator failing and the regulator was trying to compensate for the irregular output which meant the voltage would swing from about 9 to 17 volts. Fixed that, the injector coils were now getting consistent current, and the diesel ran smoothly again.
PCM,
My car has the original mechanical regulator and alternator ( I believe) and there is no smog pump.
From what I see in the assembly manuals I have, there are 2 idlers in the A/C belt system one on the passenger side and one on the drivers side.
I have a 2 pulley system currently and the aftermarket A/C shares the PS pulley. This is what I’m trying to address, I want a separate pulley on the A/C compressor and the PS pump, or replace the PS pump with an electric pump.
There is no idler in the alternator belt setup.
I’d also need to upgrade my Crank pulley to support a 3rd belt (A/C belt system).
Thx,
Jay
It looks like your problem. You might PM the OP to see what worked for him.
The picture of the front of the engine shows what you mean by the passenger side idler. It is so close to the center of the engine I never realized it was actually on the passenger side. I’m not sure my car has the one on the driver side. That was to control belt slap. Not all Fords of the era had that idler.
BTW - Since you’re running the mechanical regulator with EFI, you’ll probably notice more consistent engine performance by upgrading to an electronic regulator.
After a lot of research, the most obvious solution came to me, get a 3-groove water pump pulley along with a 3-grove crank pulley and now you can run the A/C on the 3rd groove. Just need to move the A/C compressor out a bit to align it with the 3rd groove (the mechanism that I have is adjustable).
Won’t need any idlers or additional brackets, simple and cheap(er)! CVF Racing cvfracing.com has a 3-grove water pump pulley that works with a 3 bolt crack pulley/driver side lower radiator hose 351W configuration. Apparently the radiator hose configuration makes the pulley position change.
Why Ford didn’t do this originally eludes me, but I’m sure they had their reasons.
Jay
The after market A/C bracket setup has a tensioning feature on the compressor.
I’ll have to figure out the new belt size, but I I had to do that with the current setup as neither configuration is stock.
Jay
Glad I could be of some help. Good luck with the upgrade.
I’m going to be using their (fake) voltage regulator as it allows you to keep the exiting wiring (with an additional high current wire off the Alternator), but I’m using a different 3G alternator, I wanted more power than 95 amps.
I found the Holley Sniper EFI upgrade exposes all the things that are wrong with your engine that a carburetor didn’t care about, so it always more work than you think. Exhaust leaks being the biggest issue for me.
Yep, I got their fake external regulator box with the 3G harness adapter. Will install it all when I get my converted amp meter to volt meter from Rocket man. (I just ordered it and am shipping him my amp meter on Monday) apparently the 3G upgrade is too many amps for our old amp meters.