Just a few ideas to blow some of the crap posted above out of the water. I used to sell alts OTC around that time period and can firmly attest to some 20% at least of them failing right out of the boxes. Many more failed before one year, I certainly warrantied enough of them. I personally pushed at our store to test 100% of them and starters right out of the box as the QC issues got so bad. You can fail an alt now by running it too long on a battery that needs changing, the battery never 'fills up' under that condition and the alt then dies from overheating trying to overcharge it all day long when it never comes up (see last paragraph). Then, battery left uncharged kills the new alt put on when dopey customer refuses to acknowledge that the new alt will often die again trying to charge a heavily discharged battery even if it is good. The battery being down will NOT make full field on the alt and then the alt appears to not be 'making volts' and then assumed to be bad when nothing is wrong other than the battery needs to be at full charge. The paperwork on every alt on the planet now says that but who is smart enough to read now? NEVER install a new alt without either a KNOWN GOOD or new battery to go with it, AND either one charged to 100% before you start car. Not doing so is just as dumb as changing an electric fuel pump with only one gallon of gas in the tank to immediately burn the new pump up, another stupid mistake I saw so much I cannot count.
Cars used to never have alt fusible links, they are now there for the morons that like to take the battery out of the charging circuit to 'test' the alt for being good. The possible 75-100 volts that results can burn out the entire car on some that do not have active high volt cutouts built into the regulators. I myself use no fuse link at all there, the charging cable is carefully run and fastened down to not have any issues and no problems ever doing it. I prefer it that way, a simple cable has the least resistance of all.
Alts now make a LOT more power than they did back in the '60s and '70s, as a result they get hot enough to torch themselves pretty quick now if you let them get out of shape. They are intended to now put out whopping amounts of amps but only for a SHORT time and then they have to be downloaded to cool off some or the damage begins.