my 1986 firebird is a factory no ac car. the car was built with no AC. in all my years of scrounging junkyards i have never seen a car without an AC bracket. even my no-ac car has this ugly intrusive bracket. now, my car was not exactly original when i got it and i had atfirst assumed that somone lost the bracket while working on the engine (it was rebuilt before i got it) and replaced it with the AC one, however i have since come to believe that ALL cars recieved the smae bracket for the powersteeringpump and AC (all 2.8s that is)

so while tearing apart my engine for a valve readjustment i decided to pull the bracket off and modify it to be a bit more low profile. i am thinking of yanking it off again and hitting it with some black paint. all in all i think it cut off about 1/2 of a pound, but it was just a guess, i did not do it for weightloss, i did it for ease of maintinence in the future and engine bay beutification. anyway, here are some before and after shots.


BEFORE:
here you can see the bracket in it's stock form and location


AFTER:
a wide shot of the modified bracket.


CLOSEUP:
a close shot of the bracket

 

IIRC, What they did from the factory for ac delete, was put a plastic idle pully in place of the pump. The pully was same dia as the ac pully. You can find these on ebay all the time for 65'ish bucks.

 

yeah..... for all serpantine cars. pre-87 has vbelt still. the "v" belt goes crank, waterpump, PS, AC. and the other belt goes crank, waterpump, AIR pump, alternator. on my 86 the second belt is a serp-style belt.

my pre-87 car FROM THE FACTORY had NOTHING on that bracket. no idler pully at all. unless i am mistaken.