More Engine Parts continued

I've rebuilt a handfull of these early 1G's years ago, so this was as simple as take off the shelf and dust it off.

Just a quick recap, it received new front and rear bearing, new brushes, slip rings refinished, stator windings enameled, and new bridge rectifier. I tested each of the 3 phases of the stator for interwinding shorts using an inductance tester as well as the rotor and of course shorts to the case via an ohmeter. The rectifier diodes were also verified. Everything checks out on the ones I rebuilt.

Installed

New alternator and coolant pump belt.

Some new bits. For oil pressure monitoring I'm using two senders; the cars original to directly drive the "OIL" lamp in the dash and a 0-100 PSI transducer. Also is a carb/TBI throttle cable ball assortment pack.

The old FE is starting to look busy if not possibly more modern. This old gal 500 XL is starting to come along. It's definitely not your fathers Oldsmobile Remember those old commercials....

This was another sort of win. Anyone who has a 65/66 Ford full size with an FE and factory air con knows the refrigerant compressor idler and tension pulleys are unobtanium.

I fought this battle on the LTD. I can only surmise Ford hired out the pulley with integrated bearing from an outside European source at the time and Ford made the cast iron base. Let's have a look at one more closely.

The inner shaft is the inner race for the bearing/pulley. It simply presses in the base. The inner race/shaft is Imperial/English however the outer race diameter is dead on even metric and so is the inside of the pulley where the bearing resides. It's a safe wager no-one currently makes that screwball bearing.

On the LTD's 390, at the time this was the biggest generic pulley I could find that was widely available. It's a Gates 1/2" belt pulley. But these are smaller in diameter than the Ford goofball pulleys. Now for the tensioner pulley it didn't matter as I could simply use a smaller diameter belt. So I made a new shaft that the pulley screwed onto (like a newer car) and still pressed into the old Ford base. OK, that was somewhat straight forward and not to painful.

However the idler pulley was a bit of a struggle. I made one for that too, but the diameter of the newer Gates pulley's were just too small and when the compressor was running the belt was slapping the smaller idler.

My original attempt. The tensioner pulley worked just fine, the idler did not as it was too small.

Out of pure dumb luck, one of our 66 fastbacks came with California emissions which includes a different front dress for the air pump and it had a large idler pulley that used a standard replaceable bearing.

Another round of machining was in order.

Works like a charm, however I can't find this rare pulley neither so I can use it on the other 390's.

I was just about resigned to removing this pulley off the 1966 LTD's 390 and sending it to a machine shop for multiple duplication and just eat the expense. But then I did one last search online and whalaa.

These are the same diameter pulley. I can use these pulley's and just toss the bolts, frames and standoffs. The bearing is a no name wanna bet it's Chinesium crap as there is more play than I'd like to see. With that they are a common bearing so I ordered Timken bearings to replace them. Still far cheaper than paying a machine shop to replicate the old California emissions idler pulley. I ordered quite a few of these from Rock Auto and cleaned them out as these were only 18 bucks each. Now I see they have more but are more expensive.

More to come.

Cheers