Just recently i pulled apaart my stock 289 to do a little cleaning, replace some gaskets and seals and the like, painted everything up, everything bolted right back up when i was finished, but somehow ive managed to losse the clearance between the water pump pulley and the crank pulley. i had the water pump, timing cover, crank pulley, and harmonic balancer off during this cleaning. the pulleys now hit al the way around, these are the same exact parts i took off, and they never hit. ive talked to a few diffrent mechanics, and they said theyve never heard of such a problem, anyone have any ideas what happened or what i did wrong?
289 pulleys hitting
Jun 09, 2007
Last reply: 3 years ago
9 Replies
how much are they off? seems like it cold only be a gasket thickness ?
i dodnt really remember exactly what the spaceing was, but id say somewhere i lost a good 1/16 to an 1/8 of space between the two.
that is 0.125 to 0.0625 seems like the crank pulley would stay fixed, so perhaps the waterpump is down slightly. If you loosened all the bolts and pry it up some to see if it would move up. I think the holes in the waterpump are a little oversized. But I would expect the clearance would have been at least 1/2 an inch anyway.
Just experienced pretty much the same thing only I was in the process of changing the crank pulley to a double or triple V belt.
First, is yours a 3 bolt or 4 bolt crank pulley?
Second, do you have any pulleys laying around which may have gotten mixed in? There are two pulley sizes for the crank on early 289s. In my case it was enough to cause the double V to interfer with the water pump pulley. About the amount of a couple of coats of paint.
On the inside of the pulley (the part you can see) look for the part number (something like C6-XXXXXX). Or measure the outside diameter of the crank and water pump pulleys.
I solved this the easy way. I got a set of March Performance high waterflow pulleys. But, you can get the smaller size crank pulley if you have the larger one installed. (March does have both the 3 bolt and the 4 bolt pulley)
NOTE: I have the two sizes on a note here on my desk (someplace) and will try to find and post it.
You didn't by any chance loose a spacer in your parts washer? Thats my luck most of the time...............just a thought
You had the front cover off. The crank pulley is attach to the crank and so can't move. But the water pump pulley is indirectly attached to the front caover. Which can move all over the place.
I bet when you put it back on you didn't center the cover on the crank snout.
just got done with the fix, turns out the the timing chain cover was mounted a little low as was the water pump, there still isnt the clearance that i remember, but it now sitting somewheres around .05, alot better then the nothing i started with. thanks for the replys
I am adding PS to my 1965 289 Mustang. I purchased a double groove crank pulley to run the power steering. To my dismay the new double groove pulley measures 6 11/16" dia where as the old single groove crank pulley only measures 6 1/16" dia. There is an interference of at least 1/4" between the two. I did not take anything apart, just changed the crank pulley. Can I find a double grooved crank pulley to match the dia of the old one? Many, many Thanks Dave snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com
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