1969 | 318: New power steering pump is cockeyed

[MaximRecoil]

I installed a new (remanufactured) power steering pump (Saginaw version) the other day and it ended up cockeyed, i.e., its pulley is at a different angle than the crank pulley. It's not off by enough to make it not work, i.e., the belt stays on, but something isn't right. Here's a picture:



On the rear bracket the lower mounting nut can only thread onto the stud about halfway, leaving about half of its threads hanging off the end, which definitely isn't right. Here's a picture of the nut I'm talking about:



If the whole pump could be rotated a couple degrees clockwise within the brackets, it would align the pulleys and it would push that stud through the bracket hole enough to fully thread the nut onto it, but I don't see how I can do that. I tried loosening all the mounting nuts to see if I could shift the pump at all within the bracket, but there's no play even with the nuts loosened. The only thing I can think of is that one or more spacers/washers are in the wrong place, but I don't see how they could be any different and still fit within the brackets.

I wish I'd taken pictures of the removed old one with the brackets still attached, but I didn't think that was necessary because I figured the new pump could only mount in there one way. To make matters worse, someone else swapped the brackets over from the old pump to the new one while I was working on something else, so I have no idea what went wrong.

[70 sublime]

Your first picture
Left side just behind the pulley is a mounting bolt
Looks like head of the bolt then a washer then the main bracket then a spacer then the pump
Is the spacer is in the right spot ?
If the spacer was taken out I think it would let the pump and pulley move out more to line up

Is there also the same spacer on the other lower bolt behind the pulley in first picture ?

[MaximRecoil]

There was a spacer on each of the two studs in back between the pump and bracket. On the lower stud was a thick spacer (about 1/4" thick), which is what was preventing the nut from threading on all the way. On the upper stud there was a thin spacer (regular washer thickness).

I removed both of those spacers and re-installed the pump, and that allowed the nut to thread on all the way, and the pump pulley is now in better alignment with the crank pulley (it still isn't perfectly aligned, but I don't think it will cause any problems).

I still can't figure out what happened, i.e., where is that thick spacer supposed to go? It must've been on the old pump, but where? It couldn't have been on that lower rear stud, because that stud is a little shorter than on the new pump, and with that 1/4" spacer on there, you can only get maybe 2 or 3 threads of the nut to engage (I tried it today), and when I originally removed the old pump, that nut was on all the way; so it's impossible for that spacer to have been there. And you can't put it on the upper rear stud, because that results in a gap between the pump and the bracket down by the lower stud; too big of a gap for the thin spacer to fill.

The front three studs have thick spacers (about 3/8" or maybe even 1/2"; they are definitely thicker than that mystery 1/4" thick spacer), which are all the same thickness, and those have to be there else you couldn't get the front bracket on, because the reservoir would interfere. Even with those especially thick spacers, the front bracket only clears the reservoir by about 1/16", so the way the front is, is the only way it can be. And those especially thick front spacers couldn't go on either of the two rear studs, because then you couldn't even thread the lower nut on at all.

My retired mechanic friend is the one who swapped the brackets from the old pump to the new pump while I was working on something else, and he didn't just pull those two rear spacers out of thin air, but I have no idea where they were, or where they even could have been, on the old pump.

So the way I currently have it is: no spacer on either of the two rear mounting studs (except for the spacer that's factory-pressed into the lower bracket hole), and a very thick spacer on each of the three front mounting studs (all of which are definitely required). It works fine and is better aligned than it was, but I don't know if it's technically correct or not.