quote Originally posted by cartercarbaficionado: you've been one of the very helpful members as well as Patrick and a few other main ones, btw I'm trying to prototype some brackets for your serpentine belt swap to be more like the stock v6

Wow, I would be really interested to see what you come up with.

I'll document it once my daughter gets to that point. This weekend we're pulling heads off the 3.4, and then putting the intake and exhaust manifolds back on the Iron Duke.

What I've effectively come up with is:

- Alternator brackets from 84-86 (allows the alternator to be used as the belt tensioner)
- C130 Alternator from a 1988 Pontiac Fiero V6
- Water pump Pulley from a 1987-1988 2.5 Fiero
- A/C Compressor (any kind you want, so long as it has a serpentine pulley on it)
- Crank pulley from an 87-88 2.5 L4 Fiero, or better... the one with the harmonic balancer


The hardest part is honestly trying to find the waterpump pulley. If you have a donor 87-88 motor... no problem. Mine had obviously been pulled a couple of times so it was a little rough. The closest thing I've found is a power steering pulley from a 4.3/5.0/5.7 Chevy engine. It's a 6-groove, and roughly looks to be about the same size and same placement, with the same shaft size. I don't know yet... I just ordered one, and my daughter's water pump is actually at the machine shop seeing if they can get the old one pressed off and put on the new pump. So, we'll see.

But putting it together JUST like that... it's honestly got to be AS good as the factory V-belt for the 84-86. It follows literally the identical path. If I do my maths right, the surface area seems to be roughly about the same, but of course with a little bit better gripping strength. I'd thought long and hard about what I get out of this, but the best thing in my opinion is that it eliminates the need for two belts, and allows you to run a more modern serpentine. Serpentine belts tend to have a better grip strength than a single V-belt.

When you look at the V6 Fiero... the serpentine belt would slip because, like what I'm doing, there's no place for an idler pulley. They solved this of coruse with the 87-88 Fieros by using a belt tensioner w/ idler. Rodney Dickman of course made the bracket w/ idler for the V6 motors and essentially completely solves the slipping problem. I just don't (yet) see a good place to place such a thing. I can't re-use the factory 87-88 belt tensioner because the block is physically different, and the bolts for the 84-86 could not withstand the tension that would put on them (it would cause the water pump block off to leak). I'm hoping though that once we get all the accessories on, and everything bolted back on... we'll see some more obvious points where we can incorporate an idler pulley. Even if that's just buying a super long bolt and sticking it right next to the alternator.


Here's a quick status of where we are on the engine... I'm cheating... my daughter is like 3 videos behind... but never the less...





EDIT: Another thing too... I just realized that the Fiero V6 has 5 grooves on the pulleys, where as the L4 has 6 grooves on the pulleys... so that's another little benefit to switching over... and why it may not have the same issues as the L4. Of course, the V6 used a separate belt for the compressor... but I'm swapping to the newer style of compressor which doesn't create as much load as the old DA6 style compressor does.

[This message has been edited by 82-T/A [At Work] (edited 05-25-2024).]