Installing A Concept One Serpentine Drive System - Perfect Pulleys

Once all bolts have been started the power steering pump can be tightened into place. You'll need to use the access holes in the drive pulley as shown for fastener access.

With the fasteners in place through the bracket and the spacer in position behind it, the alternator bracket is fit into position on the baseplate.

On the other side of the engine, the baseplate for the air conditioning compressor is installed next. As was the case with the alternator and power steering baseplate, the correct spacers need to be in place when the bracket goes onto the engine.

Here the order of assembly shows how the belt tensioner housing mounts to the face of the baseplate and is capped off by the front compressor mounting bracket. In addition, the thick spacer/rear compressor mount that goes between the baseplate and engine must also be held in the correct position as the fasteners travel through all of them on their way to seat in the cylinder head.

Once everything is correctly aligned, the hex-head cap screws are tightened securely. Again we used blue Loctite on all the bolt threads.

The OE-style belt tensioner is installed into the housing next. It preloads the belt with a strong spring that removes any slack in the system. This keeps the belt tension exactly where it needs to be for optimum belt grip and compensates for belt stretch as well.

The A/C hard line fittings have o-ring seals at the compressor and are installed onto the Sanden compressor with Allen-head hardware. The brushed compressor nose cone was also installed at this time with the provided hex-head screws.

Once the compressor is lifted into place, all attachment fasteners are installed. Here again the mounting is a one-position hard mount. The tensioner provides automatic belt tension adjustment to every driven component.

Next the water pump drive pulley is installed. The driven surface of the pulley is smooth because it rides on the backside of the belt. This is because the water pump is a reverse rotation pump, as used on all OE Ford 5.0L HO serpentine systems.

Route the belt according to the directions; then rotate the spring-loaded tensioner clockwise with a wrench, as shown here. The retracted pulley will allow you enough slack in the belt to slip the belt over the tensioner pulley and complete the installation.

This view of the completed installation shows why the Concept One set is worth the money. Great appearance, perfect alignment, and ease of installation make this the way to go. With all of the major components included, the kit is a good value and will save you endless hours of trying to cobble a system together using an assortment of unrelated parts. It's also great to know its system works flawlessly with the new Boss based crate engines as well, being as popular as they are.

The crank spacer is carefully machined for an indexed fit at both the balancer and the pulley. Four hex-head cap screws from the kit are used to complete the installation of the crank pulley and spacer assembly.