Fabbing brackets for AC compressor and alternator

While there are several types of brackets out there for mounting the AC compressor (this is Texas, after all), seems they all involve using head bolts. We prefer to not use head bolts this way. We prefer they stand alone. In line with this thinking, we will be mounting a bypass oil filter remotely, perhaps on the firewall, to avoid head bolts.

On the driver's side there is the old rear mounting boss for the generator. We used those 2 holes and the 2 holes for the motor mount to attach a 1/4" 6x6 steel plate. Accordingly, we drilled out the spot welds on the motor mount and moved the hole 1/4" inboard from where it was, since the new 6x6 plate would space it back out that same 1/4". This gave us 4 good mounting holes, and did not interfere with the motor mount. We cut off the front generator mounting hole, it was in the way.

The claw compressor bracket is commercially available and we welded that to the 6x6 plate. We got ours from Old Air, Ft. Worth PN 40-607. The claw comes with a wide variety of spacers. We like the claw since it gives us 4-point mounting for the comp. Some brackets only give a 2-pt mounting, and since the comp is aluminum, we wanted the extra strength. At the top of the claw bracket we welded on a 3/8 coupling nut running along the axis of the engine to be able to attach the claw to the yoke we made for the water pump. This provides stability at the top of the claw.

We also fabbed a mount for the alternator, as pictured.  We are using a Delco 10 SI 3-wire alternator, available from O'Reilly as PN  R111621A  which has a lifetime warranty. We are using a Sanden 508 compressor, which draws very little HP from the motor. The crank pulley will drive the water pump and AC comp. The alternator will be driven from the Sanden. Given that the crank pulley is of special design involving the balancer, we could not come up with other options. A two-sheave crank pulley would have been ideal. The 508 pictured is a dead comp we borrowed just for mock-up. The brackets have only been tack welded at this point. The swing arm needs to be shortened.

We wanted to get this fabbing done before we begin to tear the motor down.
 Miles continues to finesse body filler on the cab, making maximum use of the stud gun first. More on that later.