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View Full Version : Overdriving an LS2 Corvette Power Steering Pump with smaller pulley. Cons?



V6UnderPressure
01-02-2024, 07:14 PM
In order to gain some clearance for my steering box, I will need to run a smaller pulley on my Corvette power steering pump. The original pump has a 6 3/8" pulley. I want to reduce it to a 5 3/4" pulley. One thing I want to note, is that the redline of the LS2 is 6500. So I would assume the pump was built to handle that. However, I don't plan on running the engine past 5500. So I figure that alone would reduce the maximum rotation it would see by about 15% (5500/6500). If I go from a 6 3/8" pulley to a 5 3/4" pulley I am over driving the power steering pump by 10% (5 3/4"/6 3/8"). With those numbers, would it be safe to assume that I won't be taking the pump past its originally designed threshold? Or am I looking at this wrong? Looking for some opinions and experience here.

dontlifttoshift
01-03-2024, 06:16 AM
You can not determine under/overdrive ratio without the diameter of the drive pulley. In this case the crank pulley.

After that, it's just math. Figure out the pump rpm stock and then with the lower rev limit and new pulley.

V6UnderPressure
01-03-2024, 09:13 AM
You can not determine under/overdrive ratio without the diameter of the drive pulley. In this case the crank pulley.

After that, it's just math. Figure out the pump rpm stock and then with the lower rev limit and new pulley.

Good point. So I found a website that did the calculations. I'll follow up on results.

V6UnderPressure
01-03-2024, 09:35 AM
You can not determine under/overdrive ratio without the diameter of the drive pulley. In this case the crank pulley.

After that, it's just math. Figure out the pump rpm stock and then with the lower rev limit and new pulley.

From what I researched, the LS2 crank pulley on my engine is 7.5". Factory pump pulley is 6.375. So at 6500 RPM the power steering pump is at 7647 RPM. So I'm just going to call that the max RPM it should see. With a 5.75" PS pulley and at 5500 RPM, the pump would be spinning at 7174 RPM. ~6% less than stock at 6500 RPM. So that would actually make the pump spin just under 500 RPM less than the factory pulley at 6500. So it looks like I should be fine. And just for shiz and grins I entered 6000 RPM and it took the pulley to ~2% of the original "max" RPM so it looks like I have a bit of a cushion as well. 5750 would put it at 7500. The reason for all this is that I was looking at Holleys smaller pulley and they recommended a 25% underdrive crank pulley to run with this pulley. But with the math I'm assuming it's to protect those revving to factory redline+.