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© 2001 Brian F. Schreurs
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In a perfect world, you shouldn't need anything to do this part of the project -- it's all included in the kit. But it's not a perfect world, so it'd be a good idea to have some #16 hose clamps handy, as you'll soon see.

This is the bracket assembly, ready to go back in.

On the bench, the smog pump has to be sandwiched between the two huge brackets provided in the kit. The diagram in the instructions provides good guidance on how to do this. Basically, use five 1"-long 3/8-16 bolts to mount the two brackets as illustrated. For the smog pump, use the 5"-long bolt and the 0.189" spacer on the top bolt hole, and use the 1-1/4" bolt on the bottom hole.

Take the engine double bracket and smog pump assembly to the car. Throw it through a window to vent your frustration. No, wait! We're just kidding. You'll scratch your smog pump!

Install the assembly on the front of the engine using the mounting points that already exist for the original bracket. There's a total of four bolts: one 2-1/2"-long 7/16" bolt, passenger-side; two 2-1/4"-long 3/8" bolts, driver-side; and one 2-1.2"-long 3/8" bolt, bottom.

Connect up the smog pump's hose.

Vortech provides a triangular mini bracket for the alternator. It bolts to the top of the bracket assembly using two 1"-long 5/16" bolts. Put it on but leave it loose until the alternator joins it.

Mount the belt tensioner on the new bracket assembly, using the original hardware.

At this point, you might as well put the intake manifold back on; it won't be in the way much anymore. And while you're at it, put the strut tower brace back on.

Vortech's step 11 deals with mounting the new heater hose, and we're going to deal with it too -- because their instructions haven't been shown to their product packagers.

We route the new heater hose around the various engine bay obstacles.

It starts off well enough: attach the heater hose, provided by Vortech, to the heater outlet on the firewall. The elbow goes on the firewall side, facing so that the heater hose will run to the inner fenderwell. The instructions encourage you to run the heater hose to the shock tower, then up to the fuel lines and oil filler; we cut off a bit too much on our hose and couldn't make a loop that big, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything with the smaller loop.

Now here's a problem. Vortech supposedly provides a #15 adel clamp to hold the heater hose to the big bracket, and a 3/8" bolt to do the holding. Yeah, well, the bolt wouldn't fit through the clamp's bolt hole, and the hose wouldn't fit in the clamp. A bit of a problem! Actually, not too big of a deal -- we used a zip tie to hold the clamp and connected the heater hose to the water pump with a #16 hose clamp that we bought new.

Reconnect the spark plug wires, if they're not connected now, and rotate the temperature sender so that the plug is facing away from where the alternator will soon go. Then plug it back in.

So far so good! The engine's starting to look like an engine again, rather than a collection of parts in a Radio Flyer wagon. Next up, we install the dread mass airflow sensor and air intake in Vortech's Step 12!