Pulley for power steering-bad or not

[retriever47]

Hey all,
I just upgraded my 67 F100 to power steering. I bought the parts online after some research. I also read the Fordification article about upgrading to power steering. Here's the problem. Your article states that you should use a matched pulley and harmonic balancer, either three hole or four hole pattern as long as they are a matched set. The company I bought the kit from sent me a pulley with the three hole pattern, my engine has the three hole pattern but the holes are closer set to the center than the pulley they sent me, so the pulley won't bolt on. I contact them and explain the problem and provide them with the information from your article. They send me two more pulleys, neither will bolt on correctly to my harmonic balancer. I'm frustrated at this point so I take the pulley that is the closest match to my harmonic balancer and carefully drill the holes to match my original balancer pulley and bolt it on. I really want to see if the other parts to the power steering conversion kit work. Well it works and doesn't seem so have any problems at the moment. My modifications to the new pulley seem accurate enough to work.

My question is "Am I asking for trouble down the road"? Should I still look for a matching set of harmonic balancer/pulley?

The pulley I modified spins true and hasn't caused any problems yet, but will it slowly wreck my engine lower end?

Please advise.

Thanks

[m-mman]

For verification purposes: you drilled the pulley and NOT the harmonic balancer.
If you only 'opened' up the holes to match the balancer it should be OK.

Balancers are big and heavy and well, "balanced". They should not be messed with.
Pulleys are thin 'sheet metal' and weigh virtually nothing, so modifying the holes should not be a problem.
It should not signifigantly upset the balance, and you said it is spinning true.

The WORST that could happen that I see is IF the holes took away too much metal around the bolts it is POSSIBLE that the pulley could crack in that area and eventually fail. This would be most likely happen if the bolts became loose and the pulley shifted on the holes/bolts.

My suggestion would be to check the tightness of the bolts periodically but otherwise you should be OK.

[retriever47]

Thanks mman,

That's the answer I was hoping for. I did not touch my harmonic balancer, just the pulley. I did not take off more metal than necessary so it shouldn't shift, but I will keep checking the bolts.

thanks again for the quick reply.

R