ICT Billet Maps Out LS And LT Accessory Drive Fitment

The internet has become an open world full of information at our fingertips. In our pockets, we can access the answer to any question we can think of, which can be especially helpful in the garage. Our ability to instantly connect and share our tips, tricks, and secrets with the hot rodding community when swapping a project car with a modern powerplant is invaluable. But on the other side of that coin is that misinformation can spread as fast or faster, which can turn the hunt for solutions more punishing than it needs to be. To help cut through the dense fog of unreliable information about accessory drive fitment, ICT Billet has mapped out engine swap solutions.

ICT Billet offers many parts for your LS or LT swapped project car or truck. From engine mounts and cooling to exhaust and electrical components. However, they are best known for their accessory drive kits and brackets that help us find engine swap fitment solutions utilizing different combinations of factory parts. ICT Billet also gets more questions about their accessory drive bracket kits and parts than anything else, mostly involving fitment. There are too many variables to know exactly how everything will fit in your engine bay, so ICT Billet offers a mountain of specs and details to help you find your LS or LT accessory drive fitment.

LS And LT Belt Spacing

Once you have your newly acquired engine mounted in your engine bay, it’s time to start getting an eye for where you do and do not have room for your belt-driven accessories. The first place to start is the harmonic balancer mounted to the front of the crankshaft. Depending on your application, you might have limited room with your frame and crossmember or clearance between the front of your engine and the radiator and cooling fan. For LS and LT engines, three different styles of balancers dictate your belt spacing:

A major benefit of the LS engine family is that they share the same architecture. So, for example, if you have a 5.3L truck engine in your S10 pickup, you can swap out your long belt spacing style truck accessory drive and balancer for a short belt spacing accessory drive and balancer from a Corvette to gain some extra clearance from the radiator and cooling fan. The crank snout, water pump mounting, and bolt holes on the block and heads are the same, which makes swapping parts out similar to piecing together Legos.

The Gen V LT engine family also benefits from sharing the same architecture between the LT-based truck engines and the LT1s found in the sixth-generation Camaro and C7 Corvette. So you can use an LT1 Camaro or Corvette accessory drive on an LT truck engine or an LT truck accessory drive on an LT1 Camaro or Corvette engine. It is important to note that you cannot use LS balancers, water pumps, and accessory brackets on any of the Gen V LT engines or vice versa. The Gen III and IV LS and Gen V LT engines are completely different from each other in this sense.

Matching Your Water Pump

Whatever balancer you decide to use for your engine swap, the next step is to match the water pump to the same belt spacing. If you are going to use the short-style belt spacing and balancer, you will need to use a water pump off of a Corvette application, otherwise, your balancer and water pump pulley won’t line up. There are some ways to mix and match certain water pumps and balancers to come up with unique solutions to certain engine swaps.

We all wish our project had this much room in the engine bay. This radical street legal machine is Todd and Libby Krupinski’s LS3-powered rail buggy.

For instance, if you are going to use the long-style balancer on your LS, you can use the water pump from an LS truck or fifth-generation Camaro to match. These two water pumps have the same belt spacing but with different outlets for the upper radiator hose, which can help gain you clearance in tight areas like intake manifold fitment or even a supercharger.

But there is a third trick that is not commonly discussed. You can use the water pump from one of the shorter belt spacing applications, like a medium spacing F-body or short spacing Corvette, with water pump spacers from ICT Billet to line everything up with your long spacing truck style balancer. This can open up your fitment solutions considerably in obscure or uncommon applications that need another option for the upper radiator hose outlet.

An LT4 crate engine fits nicely between the fenders of Project Payback, a 1968 GTO with pro touring pretensions. But you may notice the stock frame has been replaced by a Schwartz Performance chassis, which brought its own fitment challenges.

Your Alternator, Power Steering Pump, And A/C Compressor

It’s time to finally pick out which bracket kit you are going to use to mount your alternator, power steering pump, and A/C compressor. But you have to be careful with your selection, just like the frame or radiator possibly getting in the way of your balancer, you have other considerations in your engine bay when it comes to fitting your belt-driven accessories.

Low-mounted alternators and A/C compressors can hit the frame or crossmember, causing you to get out the torch and welder to gain clearance, or possibly not allowing you to mount anything at all. Most forward facing turbo manifolds and headers won’t allow you to utilize low-mount accessories either. There are also applications, like muscle cars and classic trucks, that don’t leave enough room around the upper control arms on the frame. There is also your hood to consider. While some rattier builds and drift cars look cool with the intake, supercharger, or turbo sticking out of the hood, most of us don’t want to cut up our nicely painted hood just to clear the alternator.

For Project Swedish Meatball, there is no definitive solution for an LS-swapped Volvo wagon with a turbo, so we had to bust out the tape measurer and figure it out.

So how do you know exactly what will fit your project? ICT Billet offers application-specific sections of their website that help you pick an accessory drive that will fit your engine bay, like a 68-72 GM A-body, classic C10 truck, and many more. For those of us who may be trying to build outside the box and have a more obscure project, like a Jeep, a Volvo station wagon, or a Mazda RX7, ICT Billet offers dimensional drawings with all of their accessory drive kits and brackets. This allows you to take measurements yourself and double-check them before clicking the ‘order now’ button on their website.

There is nothing worse than spending your hard-earned money on swap parts and getting excited for the FedEx delivery driver to drop them off only to find out that you picked the wrong parts and have to return them and start all over. This can be a big waste of time, possibly cost you more money, and for sure takes the fun out of building a project. So before you put your faith in a stranger on social media, trust that ICT Billet has mapped out engine swap solutions for you.