Alternator Changing Guide

[stebo0728]

Ok so I just had to change the alternator, and I thought Id share a few thoughts, and a few things I found helpful, and a few things I discovered.

1. Because you have to access the alternator from underneath the car, this is a very daunting task, unless you have a pit to work in, or a car lift.

2. The guide instructs you to remove the stabilizer bracket bolts, freeing the stabilizer bar to move around. I believe it to be impossible to get the darn thing out without doing this.

3. The guide also tells you to remove the clamp holding the lower radiator hose, again do this, it is nearly essential.

4. I found that is was helpfully to take a piece of roper, or twine, and run it down from above and tie it to the radiator hose, then have a friend pull it taught when you push the hose up out of the way, and then tie it off on something, the guide tells you to just tuck it up out of the way, but it really doesnt stay anywhere when you tuck it, it flops right back in place.

5. Im not sure if you have to remove the positioning bracket or not from the engine mounting, but I found it hightly useful, the alternator did not want to come down out of its mounts until I could move the positioning bracket out of the way, I suggest doing so, its only one extra bolt, a bit tricky to get to, but worth the effort.

6. When removing or reinstalling the pivot bolt of the alternator, you have to negotiate around another belt, I believe its the power steering belt, and I suggest working it out above the belt rather than below, if you try to insert the pivot bolt from under this belt, then you have to push the belt up out of the way, and it does not want to move much, and it will impede the bolt head greatly from moving forward into the alternator. You could loosen the powersteering belt, but why bother if you just go in from above the belt it goes in much nicer.

7. BE SURE - OH PLEASE BE SURE - When reinstalling the alternator, hooking the electrical, and positioning it into its mounting spot, please be sure that you have not put it in in front of the belt, or that you have not tucked the belt back behind it accidentally before inserting the pivot bolt, if do not keep track of where the belt is, you will easily do this, and the belt will be stuck, and you will have to take the alternator back off the housing and move the belt before you can proceed. I made this mistake, and trust me, you wanna gouge out your own eyes when you discover what you've done. Also make sure you put in the alternator with the pulley facing the front of the car. I did NOT make this mistake, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Ok so here is the troubleshooting I did to narrow down the alternator.

1. Battery had run down, I jumped it and drove off, it ran for about 20 minutes or so, then the alternator quit, and an array of instrument lights came on, including the battery light. It ran for another 10 minutes on the battery, then quit altogether.

2. So I put a different battery in I had laying around, check and changed a few bad fuses, and the fusable link had melted in two, so I jerry rigged it with a jumper wire, got the car started. Still had many lights on, including the batter light, which pointed to the alternator again, so I disconnected the ground wire from the battery, and instantly the car dies. What else could it be right?!?

3. Took the alternator off, took it to the parts house, and they confirm its death, so I bought the new, installed it, and she runs nicely.

Ok so here is the basics of how I changed it.

1. I jacked her up from right behind the right front tire, and put a jack stand there in case of jack failure.

2. I located the alternator, and assessed the situation. Before doing anything on any part of the electrical system, always disconnect the battery, so I did this.

3. The first thing I did was to remove the nut from the locking bolt on the positioning bracket.

4. Next I loosened the pivot bolt. After this the alternator will swing freely, and you can swing it all the way in toward the engine and remove the belt from the pulley.

5. I finished removing all the positioning bracket components from the bracket, thread the adjusting bolt all the way out, and then remove the positioning lug.

6. Next I removed the nut and washer from the back end of the pivot bolt, and slid the pivot bolt on out, now the only thing holding the alternator in place was the positioning bracket itself, it kind of cradles the alternator from unerneath.

7. Next I removed the positioning bracket from the engine housing, if you follow the bracket with your fingers, you feel it run around the alternator and up about 5 inches and there is a bolt at the top of it holding it in, remove that and the bracket can slide off to the side. There are a couple cables secured to the bracket, so you can remove those to take the bracket out, or just leave them attached and slide the bracket over out of the way. Once you do this the alternator will come right out, and fall to rest on top of the stabilizer bar, and a few other hoses.

8. Next I removed all the electrical from the alternator. There are three connections, first the main "HOT" wire is held on with a brass nut, should be a 12 mm nut if i remember correctly. Then there is the small ground cable, its held in by a 8mm small bolt. Lastly, the harness is a bit tricky to remove, especially if you are trying to do it by feeling it alone, if you finagle enough you can get a look at it, you just have to get a small flat screw driver and pry up on the front side of the plug, there is a small catch that holds it in. Play with it a bit and you will figure it out, it took me about 10 minutes but I got it. Ok now the alternator is free as a bird in there, now is the tricky part.

9. Next I removed the stabilizer bolts, they are 15mm bolts, and I used a 1/2" rachet with a 12" extension, gives plenty of leverage, those bolts are put in pretty well, it well take some good leverage to break them free. Once you have all them out, the stabilizer will move a bit, giving you a little more room to get the alternator out.

10. Then I removed the small black clamp holding the lower radiator hose in place. The bracket is really in the way, I would remove it rather than just slip the hose out of it.

11. Now you just have to get creative in getting the alternator to come out from around all the obstacles, I cant really tell you a good way to do it, just be patient with it, and eventually you will move it the right way. You will have to pull with a little bit of force to get it to squeeze out, but just be careful there are some small hoses going into the bottom of the radiator that you dont want to damage or kink.

12. Ok here is where I took a nice break, slept about 12 hours!! Its quite arduous getting her out of there while lying on your back. So the next morning I get up and go by the new alternator, no core charge necessary because I took the old one in. Cost me $149 plus tax, There is about a $50 core charge you will have to pay if you do not take the old one in first, but then you will get that back as soon as you take the old one in.

13. Ok, nice shiny new alternator, woohoo!!! So everything is pretty much the same but in reverse. I must say its a bit harder to the the thing back up in there past all the obstacles, cause it weighs about 25 or 30 pounds, and you have to lift and push on it, so it will wear you out a bit more than taking it out did.

14. Again PLEASE be sure that the belt is out in front of the alternator before mounting it back onto the engine. Also PLEASE be sure you install it with the pulley facing the front of the car. It may not go on backwards I dont know, but dont risk it, be sure its right.

15. I found it easier to attach all the electrical first. I connected the small black ground wire first, because it branches off of the harness wires, and I tried it the other way, and with the harness already plugged in, its nearly impossible to get that ground bolt to go in while stretching the ground wire over to fit. Trust me do the ground wire first. Then plug the harness in, then attach the "Hot" wire.

16. Next I put the alternator onto the engine and inserted the pivot bolt, again I tried going below the powersteering belt with the bolt first, and the belt is very hard to negotiate around, it is so much easier to be sure and come above that belt, it will make life easier.

17. Next I reattached the positioning bracket to the engine housing, through trial and error I realized, its better to hold the bracket right up against the housing and insert the bolt. The bracket sits really close to the main pulley, and you have to twist it a bit sideways for it to go all the way back, so if you were to have the bolt already started, and tried to slide the bracket from there back flush to the engine housing, then it wont make it past the edge of that pulley. Hold the bracket to the housing then insert the bolt, again life is easier this way. I would not tighten this down all the way yet, so you can have a little play in attaching the bracket to the alternator.

18. Next I reattached the positioning bracket to the alternator using the lug bolt, and loosely threaded on the nut. Turn the lug to where you can start threading the positioning bolt back into it.

19. Next I put the belt back onto the pulley, and pulled it as taught as I could without straining, and hand treadeded the positioning nut as far in as I could. Then you can just use a wrench to finish positioning it. Its next to impossible to accurately test belt deflection when doing this, so I just kept going until the belt, at the point between the alternator pulley and the main pulley, as close to the middle as I could get, that needs to deflect about a 1/4". You dont want the belt too tight or it will wear out alot faster.

20. Now with the alternator in its proper position, I tightened the nut on the lug, the "lock bolt" if you will.

21. Then I put the washer and nut back on the pivot bold, and tightened it down. This was a bit tricky, it is nearly impossible to get a wrench squarely on the but, you will have to hold it at a bit of an angle, but if you play around with the wrench a bit, youll be able to get a good hold on it, once you do, DONT MOVE AN INCH with that hand, and then use a rachet to run the bolt tight. Once you get nearly tight, the nut wont move anymore and you can remove the wrench from the nut.

22. Yah!! Shes in!! Only a few more steps, you have to replace the clamp for the lower radiator hose, and put the hose back into it.

23. Lastly I reinstalled the stabilizer bolts. Again I ran into a snag here. You can get the driver side bolts back in no problem, but the passenger side of the bar wont move up enough to reinsert the bolts. To get around this, I left the jack stand there on the passenger side, and then went and jacked the driver side up as well, this leveled out the car, and I was able then to reinsert the passenger side stabilizer bolts.

24. Now I just had to let the car back down to the ground, re connected the battery, and she fired right up! As another test, I disconnected the battery again while it was running, and she continued to purr, so life returns to normal!!

Hope you find this bit of info useful if you decide to swap out your own alternator. Let me know if you have any questions, Im no expert, but Ill try to answer them as best I can.

[Cyman]

thanks for the write-up. I'll probably be rebuilding or replacing my alternator within the next month or so.

[stebo0728]

good luck, dont let it intimidate you, its definitely do-able, id have a friend there just in case you need an extra hand

[rollin_300]

when removing the alternator I found a MUCH easier way by removing the support for the sway bar just two 14 mm bolts...you can pull it down just enough to get it out without any worry of damaging the bar or any other part....

although I did almost catch my pry bar with my teeth.