Hmm....
While I've never made the switch, I only have an opinion.
One late night many, many moons ago I had a wide fanbelt break in the middle of
Orange County, CA. The tow truck driver shrugged when he saw the wide belt and
said "you'll have to wait till morning to get another". Instead of being home
in bed at 3 AM, I slept in the car until the next morning when I could get a
wide belt. Then, low and behold, I couldn't get the replacement on because of
the damn fan pully being too close to the steering rack. Had to get the car
towed back to Belmont Shore. I really think a narrow belt would have made the
clearance.
When I did my rebuild a few years ago I purposefully put additional shims on
the engine mounts to allow the "wide" belt to go on, even with the alternator
conversion. Maybe on the next rebuild, and if I put in an electric fan, I'll
make the conversion to a narrow belt. In the meantime there's a spare wide belt
in the truck (oops, boot).
There's a cool looking water pump pulley in the Euro Moss catalog that uses the
narrow belt. A solid billet polished to a high sheen. For $300 bucks you can
have it too. It's only money!
John
On Monday, January 31, 2005 4:35 AM, Randall [SMTP:tr3driver@comcast.net]
wrote:
> > Can someone tell me the big disadvantage I presume there must be to
> > keeping a wide belt on a TR motor. It is quite an expense to switch
> > all the pullies over, particularly when you have perfectly good
> > original ones.
>
> On an otherwise stock engine I see no disadvantage at all. IMO the narrow
> belt
> conversion is only for when you start changing other things, like adding an
> alternator or a harmonic dampener.
>
> Randall
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