Serpentine setup

[Mathius]

I've always found it ridiculous that an aftermarket system can run over $1000 dollars for something that you could get from a junkyard that does the same for a tenth of the cost. I've used the 90-up Camaro and Caprice setups and polished,chromed, or powdercoated they look awesome. Plus parts are off the shelf and easily available. For me the biggest thing is the tensioner. Sucks having to adjust the brackets or bars on the aftermarket stuff every so often. Take into account the time needed to fabricate your own and maybe $150 aint so bad. I've spent tons of hours and materials sometimes trying to roll my own and it doesn't always come out as good as the original. That being said, ain't nothing like being able to say "I made this". <g> My .02

Depends on what kind of a design is necessary. I have some 3/16" plate material in storage that will probably work fine if I gusset it properly. If that works, I'm only out $30 for the tensioner + whatever it costs me to deal with the a/c issue. Might be able to find a junk compressor on Ebay for cheap and just use that until I get a real a/c unit.

1LE Camaros didn't have a/c. They used an idler pulley that mounted in the location of the compressor. GMPP has 2 versions of the kit. The non a/c version has that idler which is available seperately.
http://store.summitracing.com/partde...5&autoview=sku

$80 is pretty pricey for a temporary solution. Sortof defeates the purpose of building my own system, when I can get a full setup used for $150. Maybe I can find a used one, or see if the non/ac version of the silverado just used a shorter belt.

Mathius