Saginaw Power Steering Pump Mounting

The power steering setup I originally started with used a Toyota Celica pump (remanufactured from Checker), steering box, Toyota Truck high pressure hose and a small reservoir.   The system worked ok but the pump would blow power steering fluid by the front seal when I got the front end bound up in the rocks.  You could actually see a stream of power steering fluid at times!  I am not sure what is causing this, maybe the main pulley on the Samurai is bigger than the Celica so I am spinning the pump too fast, or I suspect the shaft is deflecting a bit under extreme load allowing fluid to bypass the seal.  Either way I was tired of having an oily mess on that side of the engine bay all the time.  After some research on the internet I noticed the universal upgrade for the older Land Cruisers and Broncos was a GM Saginaw power steering pump.  They look like a canned ham and were put on tons of cars, I believe the same general pump design was used back in the 60's up to today. Here's a link to a site which has two pages of various Saginaw pumps, their flow rates, pressures and what vehicle they came on : http://www.sandstruck.com/catalog2000/power/powersteeringsaginaw.htm .  The pictures above are of the Celica power steering pump, bracket and tensioner.  The pump is a pretty compact unit, not sure what the max pressure was but there were times when it felt like I didn't have power steering so a higher pressure pump would be nice.  

I actually grabbed two pumps at the junkyard, one was from a fairly new S-10 Blazer, but someone had already taken the pulley.  Since I didn't have a puller (the pulleys are pressed on) I took the entire pump/pulley from a Dodge van.  Be sure and grab any brackets that were used to mount the pump, they may come in handy.  The bracket on the left is from the van, if you didn't want to mount an adjustable idler pulley you could use that bracket to allow the pump to rotate for tension adjustment.  The S-10 had a really tall bracket that I ended up using (more on that later).  The two pumps looked identical at first glance but there were some important differences.  The biggest one I could see was where the return line was mounted to the reservoir, this will effect the mounting brackets.

Also the high pressure hose fitting was different.  From what I gathered on the internet there are two versions.

Here's the end on my Toyota hose, I'll need a custom hose to make the system work.

Step one was to make a small plate that would serve as the mounting base for my bracket.  I bolted the plate to the engine block using the lower two holes closest to the front of the block.  Next, I used one of the old brackets I had with the original Canyon States power steering kit, it mounts to two of the exhaust manifold studs.  Using the tall bracket that came with the S-10 pump (it mounts to the two studs on the back of the reservoir), I was able to make a small arm and clamp the power steering pump in place.  I made some measurements to get a good guess on how far forward it would need to be.  Sometimes you get lucky, the position front to back was nearly perfect where it was clamped.  I did have an interference with the tensioner I was using.  You probably noticed I don't have the pulley on there.  I was having a hard time finding the right puller so I had to call it a night at this point.

Well, almost called it a night.  Since it was still early I grooved my Baja Claws.

Here's the custom hose I had made.  It has the Toyota fitting on one end and the Saginaw fitting on the other.  If I ever need to adapt to another box/pump I can just have a new end made.  The next picture shows the Saginaw pump mounting bolts which are usually blocked by the pulley.  Keep in mind you don't want to have to pull the pulley off to get the pump out of the car (the puller is long and can't be used with the pump in the car without taking out the radiator).  I made the above mounting plate using a band saw and grinder.  I planned to grab the two holes shown and the two studs on the back of the reservoir.  The angle was a guess at the angle the pump would sit at.  I just had to get close because I was going to weld a piece of steel angle between the base plate and pump plate.  Since this pump came out of a fairly new truck I didn't do a rebuild, just replaced the front shaft seal.  It was actually cheaper to buy the complete rebuild kit  ($11 at Autozone) which includes the front shaft seal as opposed to buying just the shaft seal by itself ($9).

To get the mounting plate attached to the base plate I clamped the pump into position again (now with the pulley installed) and then clamped a piece of steel angle to the mounting plate and tack welded it to the base plate.  I then removed the pump/mounting plates and started welding them together, being careful not to melt the P/S pump :)  Be sure and let it cool between beads.  I could have pulled the pulley off again but it's kind of a pain.

You can see the back of the bracket in the first picture above.  To take care of the interference between the tensioner and pump I built a small block to move the tension up another 4 inches and I cut off the little arm that was on the tensioner mount bracket.  Last thing I did was take the S-10 bracket I used for the back mounting studs and cut it down a bit (it was really tall).  If you don't want to make the pump rotate for belt tension adjustment you can probably pick up a tensioner like the one I have from a place that sells air conditioning kits. 

I cut an old belt up to figure out how long of a belt I would need.  First impressions after firing it up the first time: it seemed easier to turn the wheel on flat ground.  Can't wait to test it off road.

While I was waiting for the bracket to cool between beads, I pulled off my skid plate to bend it back into shape and the rear transfer case mount came off with it!  I wonder how long that weld was broken?  

I welded the original bracket back to the frame and then put a piece of steel angle under that to reinforce it.  I also checked the other side and noticed the factory welds started to crack.  Some new welds and a few small braces took care of that potential problem.

5-29-02 Update - Over Memorial Day weekend I ran Terminator, Judgment Day, Predator, Annihilator and a bunch of mining roads to test out the pump.  The steering was noticeably improved over the Celica pump.  I tried putting one tire up on rocks and walls, tried driving into walls and noticed there was never a time where the steering felt solid.  Worst case I had to use two hands but the wheels turned with medium effort unlike before where at times the front end felt solid. I also noticed if I was tracking along a rock wall and the wall started to force the tire to turn, it was much easier to hold the tire into the wall where before the tire would have been pushed away (and the pump would have started leaking) despite clinging onto the steering wheel with both hands.  No leaks out the front seal, I lost a little fluid out the top but that may have been due to some of the angles my rig saw that weekend :)  The real kicker was I cut my left hand open on Friday night which required 8 stitches, so I did not have full use of that hand.  I drove all weekend pretty much one handed and had an easier time than with the old pump and both hands.