my 87 f250 has a 460 with v-belts and i wanted to swap it to the serpentine setup seen on 1988+ trucks.

has anyone ever done this swap?

was it worth the upgrade?

what all was required?

did you just need new pulleys for the accessories, or new accessories as well?

thanks
ryan

 

You may need a new alternator as they changed from the 1g to the 2g. I think the 1g may bolt up with a pulley swap. I don't recommend the 2g its junk, and is known to start fires.

The latter serpentine will have the side mount 3g alternator. I believe all the accessory cast mounts are interchangable on most serpantine systems but you need the engine specific plate to attach them to the engine.

The 460 serpentine system run two serpentine belts, not sure if its auto tension my guess is it is.

I would recommend finding a lattery model setup that has the 3g alternator and take everything off the engine. It will make life a lot easier.

 

I don't have specific experience with this engine, but I've done such "conversions" on other engines. You'll need at least some bracket changes to do a conversion to a true serpentine setup. That *might* require an accessory change as well - most often, it's the alternator which is effected.

An alternative might be upgrading from V to Micro-V pulleys (only), retaining all the existing accessories and the manual tensioning function. If you have A/C, this becomes a bigger project, as you typically need to swap the whole clutch assembly, not just the pulley.

 

thanks for the replies guys. i figured i would have to change some brackets and the compressor. i guess it will be a good thing to look into once my old compressor dies on me. i agree on finding a newer truck and robbing everything off that. that does seem to be the easiest thing to do