To Serpentine or Not?

[67-Cowboy]

2 more cents worth; hey what would you folks think if I told you we owned a SBC that turned 10,000 RPMs with standard 1957 type pulleys and a commercial grade Gates v-belt !!! No, my eyes aren't brown this Modified stock car won a championship at a local track it even won 3 races a night for eight straight weeks. Ok enough of the soap box; about 10 or 15 years ago Hot Rod magazine and a few others did stories on serp. belt systems and said that you gain between 3-15 horse power. Some of you may have the articles in a stack of old magazines. I personally am running v-belts for now, but you know they do have deep groove pulleys for high RPM !!!

[Dick Dale]

I'm too cheap to switch over and I don't race. My truck was my grandfathers, he beat it to death with over 200,000 hard miles and never broke a belt.

[Dean23]

heres the serp set up i had on my small block its off of a 91 gmc 1500. it even has an a/c delete idler bracket for those with no a/c. a serp setup is the only way to go...reliability...quieter then v belts and they alos are easier to maintian and change belts

[CHEVIBUBBA]

Originally Posted by cableguy0

nahh i change my v belts every 5-8k miles because i wring them off and shred em going 6500 all the time. its proven a v belt will shred around 6500 rpm. a true RACE car isnt seeing any street miles and if it is they are minimal. whats run at the track and whats run on the street is two totally different things. there really arent any benefits to a v-belt except maybe slippage and constant adjustment needed.if v-belts were so great they woulda never stopped running them on modern vehicles

i guess i am defying the laws of physics cause mine turns 6500-7000 rpm at least twice a week.have you checked your pulley alignment?most haven't & wouldn't know what to do if it was off.
as for true race cars;#1:1000 race miles are equivilent to 10000 or more street miles.
#2would you consider a 10 second sedan a true race car?
i do!& so do the one's being spanked by it at the track.it is of little concern that it runs those times with bfg ta radials, drives to the track at ennis & home to corpus christi & is tagged & inspected.
whats run at the track usualy is what is run on the street.just a few years later.it's called r&d.
most manufacturers subscribe to this using factory teams to learn how to make their stuff better, stronger & sometimes faster.

the benefit of v-belts;
1: they are cheap
2:they work.
3:unless you lose the water pump or crankshaft, when one accessory fails, the others continue to operate.it's called redundancy.
4:a v-belt setup is lighter.
5:tensioner?i don't need no stinkin' tensioner!
6:less moving parts.

[Bamm]

Has anybody got pics and would put together a how-to on this setup, what you would need and what to look out for? Or has it aleady been done and you have a link? Thanks,......Jerry

[hotrodmtodd]

Purs,

That is EXACTLY what I am looking for. I will have to research that a little to see what I can find. Just curious, was the PS not part of the late model SERP system? PM me with any info you could supply, if you would be so kind. Thanks, Hot Rod

[Purs]

it was all off the 86 1 ton, the PS pump, brackets, all of it.

[72GMC51]

Mine is a GM Performance parts setup it comes with all of the brackets, belt, water pump, alt, power steering pump and either a pulley or an air compressor, instruction etc. works great and I thought for what you got was a good price.
JC

[67ChevyC10Stepside]

i like simplicity....the serpentine takes up the whole front of the motor....plus with running two vs one breaks the other one takes over....a serp breaks and your screwed...

[jamis]

Originally Posted by cableguy0

nahh i change my v belts every 5-8k miles because i wring them off and shred em going 6500 all the time. its proven a v belt will shred around 6500 rpm. a true RACE car isnt seeing any street miles and if it is they are minimal. whats run at the track and whats run on the street is two totally different things. there really arent any benefits to a v-belt except maybe slippage and constant adjustment needed.if v-belts were so great they woulda never stopped running them on modern vehicles

v-belts come off above 6,000 rpm or shred at 6500? What did us old folks do back in the day
Where do you gen-x guys come up with this stuff?

There is nothing wrong with a v-belt as long as you have some kind of mechanical ability and line things up right. Don’t get me wrong, a like and prefer a serpentine because its cleaner. But what you sate is just untrue.
The reason they went to serpentine is easy assembly at the factory, takes less space, and self adjusting not that they were coming apart at high rpms.

[HugrOrang71]

I can't recall seeing anyone on the short tracks in my area running serpentine belts on their cars (in any class). My limited sportsman car would reach about 8100 rpm at the end of the straight and would normally run above 5K all race long. I never had a belt failure in the 2 years that it was run. If I remember right, we had changed them in the off season for normal maintenance. The setup was pulled off of some 70's car in the wrecking yard and bolted on to my engine with new accessories. The last WC race I was at, I don't remember seeing anyone running anything but v- belts either.

I think one of the reasons for the OEM to switch to serpentine belts with a tensioner is for the maintenance free aspect. How many new cars that have no grease points, as they are "lubed for life"? It is an attempt at taking normal prev. maintenance out of the consumers hands.
I even heard rumors a few years ago that the automotive industry was lobbying to prevent the hood from being opened by anyone but a factory service tech. The only access was to check oil and water.

Serpentine belts have started to show up in the HD trucking industry. I can tell you from first hand experience that those new engines with serp belts have more problems with throwing belts than the old v- belt engines with 1-2 million miles. Not to mention constantly changing tensioner assemblies and idler pulleys, bearings.

With that being said, I think that the serp systems have a really clean look to them and if properly set up can give many miles of trouble free service.