# Manual to power steering conversion



## buconine24 (Dec 4, 2017)

I am wanting to convert my gto from manual to power steering. The car is a 65 with a 67 400 in it. Do i get brackets and pump for the engine year or the body year? It is not a correctly restored car so I'm not concerned about visuals. Thanks!


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## Pinion head (Jan 3, 2015)

Welcome to the forum. Can go about this this several ways. IF the build is totally stock restoration, will need a '65 PS pump, brackets, & correct two groove wp & crank pulley, either factory AC or factory non AC application pulleys. These parts require early 8 bolt timing cover & 6 bolt damper, which were originally used on a '65. The pulleys are shallow narrow groove used on '65 & 66 Pontiacs. Deeper wider grooves commonly began with '67 Pontiac v8 pulleys. What do you have in the '65 for an engine, what are performance goals?

Another option is the 11 bolt conversion set-up. Many '64-65-66-67-68 Pontiac V8's have had their cooling systems upgraded to 11 bolt timing cover & 11 bolt wp. Often this came about as part of an engine swap. In other cases, the 11 bolt swap was part of a well thought plan towards optimizing cooling & running an SFI rated damper. This setup uses the one piece '68+ damper (harmonic balancer). Many engine builders have decided to go this route with an SFI rated damper. It's one thing to go 11 bolt setup in a street/strip race car with manual steering, & another to complete a stock appearing & properly fitting brackets & pulleys with mid '60's appearance PS pump. Have been putting conversions together for this swap for over 2 decades. The conversion uses a '67 PS pump & alum pivot block, steel hockey stick bracket. Proper fitting alt straps are used, as well are correct series wp & crank pulleys. 

On PS box upgrades, in the late 80’s through mid 90's, I installed several '78 WS6 T/A boxes in late '60's GTO's. while these boxes have a nice tight feeling and close ratio, the turn radius is effected (bigger) when installed in the A-body's. For '91 Jeep began building Grand Cherokees. The Saginaw steering box out of the Jeep GC's has been the go to "quick ratio" power steering box for the last 20 years. Have grabbed these used whenever I could, but it's hard to find relatively low mile GC's in the Pick-N-Pulls. Another problem with most Jeep GC's is they have a digital speedo. If the Jeep GC isn't marked with mileage, & is fairly worn out looking vehicle, I'm not gambling on a used steering box, have prob fifty original Saginaw PS boxes that can turn in as a core & purchase a parts store reman. It was different deal all through the 90's, 00's, when power steering boxes out of these yards were $22-25 a pop, & was no big deal, for me locally, to pull one, install it in the garage, & if problems, swap it out with another.

If you can supply more info to what you are doing with the '65, can elaborate more.


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## buconine24 (Dec 4, 2017)

Car is built for street/strip. 11:1 400, comp 305 magnum, performer rpm. I'll have to look at the pulleys and see what's on it. Any measurements i can take to see what's on it? It is a non ac car with a 2 groove crank pulley. I think the water pump is a single. It has a rear p/s bracket on it now but not sure which one.


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