1968 Chevy Chevelle - Feelin' Groovy

We found that the adjustment slot of the bracket produced a very narrow range of adjustment due to the slot's vertical orientation.

This Borgeson 5.75-inch diameter pulley has a keyway, and slides on a .662-inch diameter shaft. This is the most common shaft style for a Saginaw Type I pump, but some use a press-fit pulley on a .75-inch shaft. If your pump has a hex nut on the end, it's the same as ours, and this is your pulley. We ordered the Borgeson billet pulley in an unpolished form for $56.99, but you can get it polished for $6 more.

March's instructions say to install the main bracket first, but we discovered that you can't get the pump behind it if you do. Instead, loosely bolt the pump brackets to the pump brackets first using a 5/16-inch Allen wrench. Note how the return tube on the reservoir clears the cylinder head; this is the only type of pump/reservoir configuration that will work with the March bracket kit. (We know because we tried several pumps.) On most Saginaw pumps, the return tube interferes with the cylinder head on the big-block, so find one with the tube at the edge of the reservoir.

Here's the March P/S bracket kit installed on our 496 big-block with a fresh 47.5-inch V-belt and the hoses reconnected. We discovered it was way easier to wrap a shorter belt over the pulley before tightening all the bracket bolts, then tightening the bracket bolts, instead of adjusting the pump by the bracket slot. Note how the crank and P/S pulley line up perfectly!

On the alternator side, the main bracket of Summit's big-block, long water pump alternator kit connects to the water pump with two 5/16-inch Allen head bolts.

Another 5/16-inch Allen head bolt goes through the pivot point, then through a precision billet spacer, and finally into the cylinder head. The alignment of the Summit kit was flawless.

The Summit alternator bracket kit in assembled form. The 496-inch big-block looks much cleaner and belt adjustment is no longer a chore.