Topic: a review of new "custom" power steering/ alt bracket

[Andy78TA]

Hello all,
   I wanted to start a thread about this to let people know in case anyone was thinking about buying this item. The bracket is a custom power steering and alternator bracket made by CVF racing. I bought the item on ebay here
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110685176641&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT

I thought this would be something a little different to put on my car and would add a little something for not too much work. I was wrong.

When I got the item which was shipped to me very quickly, I thought it looked great. The directions seemed pretty clear and the parts were pretty easy to figure out. Upon starting of installation things went wrong. First, when I tried to put the main bracket on, the center bolt that goes to the water pump that they supplied me cracked. Now I have a piece of bolt stuck in the block that I can't do anything about until I go to a machine shop and have it drilled out, still I thought ok, sometimes you get a faulty bolt. I continued.

second problem, upon trying to install the top adjusting rod for the alternator, the bolt they supplied was not long enough, it was the size it said it was suppose to be on the instructions but it was just not long enough. Because of this I needed to take a trip to Home Depot to get a new longer bolt.

third problem, upon actually getting things lined up, the way the bracket is, the power steering reservoir actually hits the top of the A arm at the back. At this point I had enough and emailed the company immediately explaining my frustrations and disappointment. I also noted to them that nowhere did it say in the auction that you needed to buy new belts which I did not think of when i bought the item.

Now let me say this, although the product in question really was not what I expected one of the company reps emailed me back immediately and apologized. They immediately refunded all of my money including shipping and told me to keep the bracket for the aggravation that it caused me. I thought this was a very stand up thing to do and because of this decided to give it a shot once more.

I have successfully put the bracket, alternator, and power steering on and just need to go out and buy the new belts. I however needed to take the power steering pump out, take off the pulley, re-bend the high pressure power steering line, and grind a little bit off of the power steering reservoir and the A arm. I also needed to really change the order of their directions. This ended up taking 3 days for a total of probably 15+ hours to accomplish, not really what I would call a bolt in installation.

I just wanted to write this in case anyone else was interested in this product. It WILL fit, but is not bolt it, in requires some real work and thinking and measuring to get things right, however the company seems dependable and will stand by their products. I will include some pictures tomorrow for anyone interested.

-Andrew

[Andy78TA]

after 7 days of the bird being down, it is actually drivable again. I am going to take pictures later today to show what all the aggravation was about

[Andy78TA]

some pictures of before and after

Before with stock brackets:







the new bracket kit



after with the new brackets

[SoonerTA]

Wow, that sucks.  I have looked at this kit on ebay for quite some time.  Thanks for the review.  But now that it is on, it really looks good.  Thanks for posting!

[Andy78TA]

it does look nice, i'll admit that. And at a local get together last week a few people came up to me and said they didn't know there was anything like that for pontiacs. If someone was interested in it I would be more than happy to give some pointers to anyone to hopefully allow installation to not be nearly as much of a hastle as mine was It does seem like a good quality piece.

[SoonerTA]

It does look very nice!

[Andy78TA]

"mark" you sent me a message but since you are not a member i couldn't send  you one back. To answer your question Yes It did. I had to do a lot of work to get the steering pump to fit including grinding down quite a bit of metal from the steering box. It was a huge PITA and the belt still rubs a little bit.  I am going to try to find a smaller diameter pulley since that will change the angle. you will also need to bend the low pressure return port out a little from the steering pump.

-Andrew

[Chuckles]

Well quick question for you Andy because, I am considering buying this bracket setup as well. Are your motor mounts new or do they sag a little bit? I know sagging motor and transmission mounts can cause a lot of problems with fitment issue's.

[Andy78TA]

they are not brand new, but they are also not nearly beat up enough to cause the problems that I had... At least I would be incredibly amazed if so ha. If you decide to go with it I would be happy to give you some tips, I just wanted people to know for me at least, it was not the easiest thing to install.

[tonyuh60]

Andy, I am planning on doing a pulley swap using CVF(crank,waterpump,alt,power steering pump)  and was going to order just the alt bracket without the steering.  the part you had to grind out, do you think you would have had the same issues just using the stock power steering bracket with a cvf alt bracket?   Thanks for the review.

[Andy78TA]

If I remember correctly the alternator bracket doesn't move the power steering pump nearly as much as the power steering and alternator bracket. Because of that I don't think you would need to grind anything down. If you look at my before and after pictures, although they are kinda bad, you can see that the power steering pumped moved radically from its stock position.

[cvfracing]

I wanted to update the forum on this post because it does get brought up from the archives from time to time and the information is a little outdated.  We have read through this post several times and feel the original poster did a fair evaluation of our product.  There were several issues with with our design and we have incorporated this feedback into our design.  We have re-designed our product and made the following changes:

1)  We used a longer bolt for the adjusting rod - that was an easy fix 
2)  We release a new, high mount bracket that puts both the alternator and power steering up about 3 inches higher.  This solves the issue with hitting the steering box on the newer, narrower Pontiac cars like the TA's and Firebirds.  The only issue is this bracket requires the newer heads the bolt hole near the intake manifold.  (I tried to add photos but the post is either too old or I don't have permissions). 
3)  We still have the old "low mount" design that works well on the older, wider cars and on cylinder heads without the correct bolt hole.
4)  Our new serpentine systems will work with the old or new heads and will also work on all cars without interference with the steering box.

If the original poster would like to try our new high mount bracket or one of our serpentine system, please give us a call and we can get you some new hardware to review / test.  If you have other improvement ideas for our products please let me know.

[drtracer58]

Stand Up Company that will go out of it's way to correct a problem       You got my business ......

[wheelz]

I just purchased the same alternator and power steering bracket kit (and pulleys)...and wished I had seen this post before purchasing.
No where on their site does it mention any issues with their kits and certain pontiac blocks.

I finally got the point in my build to be installing the new brackets from CVF Racing

The very first step in the instructions is to bolt the alternator extension bracket to the alternator using the supplied 5/16-18x1" bolt. However the alternator extension bracket has a 3/8-16 hole and so does the alternator.

Also the fan pulley will not fit on the existing studs as the new pulley is thicker than the stock pulley and the stack studs are not long enough. New studs are not supplied. I have tried a few other sizes of studs,(including carb studs), but so far have not found any that will fit.

[brentco]

I wanted to jump on this thread because I came across it previously when I was trying to figure out a replacement alternator/power steering pump bracket to accommodate a particular aftermarket alternator. I ended up ordering the CVF Racing bracket kit, and it worked great on my 76 Trans Am. I'm very happy with the fit and finish of the end result. It appears that CVF Racing fixed all the issues with the original kit.

I think the difficulty stems in part from the OE brackets on the 2nd Gen birds -- they were a mess. There were a number of different versions of brackets and most TA's today have gone through some modification that can completely throw off the bracket setup. And replacement OE brackets can be very difficult to find today. The best feature of the CVF Racing brackets is their flexibility. They have adjusting arms that can be adapted to a variety of applications/setups.

And as others have mentioned, their customer service is phenomenal. I had a few questions along the way, and needed a different size of one of the adjusting arms for my build. They were immediately responsive and helpful and went out of their way to provide great service.

Just FYI for others who run into v belt/bracket issues.