Originally Posted by rubrhammer

John, in photos 1,2,4 &5 it appears that the belt as it passes from tensioner to idler is running a little further rearward than where it is on the water pump. Is this an optical illusion or is my eye sight really getting that bad? Nice looking job.

Originally Posted by Speartech

Here's some pics of how we have done the last 2 5.3 street rod set ups. I think most of what we've done would work on the trucks also, but it's mainly just to give you some ideas if you are trying to figure out how to make the swap. I know we sell a lot of idler pulley relocation brackets; I don't know how many people actually complete the swap to the LSx intake.



Here's how we went from this:



to this:



On this one we kept the stock truck water pump, pulled out the hose nipple, made some band saw cuts in the bend so that it could be bent into a sharper turn, and then rewelded all of the cuts shut. We then drilled the new hole in the front boss (the one used on the F-bodies) and pressed the reformed truck nipple into the front. We finished it off by making an aluminum plug for the hole on top:



This gives decent clearance all the way around it and looks pretty good too:






We also switch to a car coilpack on the drivers side to clear the fuel fitting:



We've also done it with the car water pump and spacers, but I think this looks a little nicer.