Briggs & Stratton Engine - Alternator and Voltage Regulator Replacement

[Music] hi I'm Scott in this video I'm gonna go over how to replace an alternator in a riding lawnmower this powered by a Briggs & Stratton engine in this video I'll cover the process I used identified the alternator is a part that need to be replaced this process I'm getting ready to cover can be used in most Ratlam Wars that are powered by Briggs & Stratton engines I also covered the voltage regulator and a Briggs and Stratton engine that's used in riding lawn mowers the alternator is located underneath the flywheel I'll go over the process on how do you remove your flywheel from your Briggs and Stratton engine I'll go where the parts are used and the tools I needed to use the complete this project I'll go over the cost and what I spent to accomplish replacing the alternator on my Briggs and Stratton engine alright let's get started the more I'll be working on in this project is my 2003 Craftsman lawn tractor electric start automatic transmission and a 42 inch deck this mower is equipped with a Briggs and Stratton engine 18 and a half horsepower the model number and the type can seem printed on top of the valve covers the voltage regulator is part of the electrical system that charges as a battery it's cheap at 13 bucks it's easy to get to and replace and it often fails so I went ahead and replaced it as part of this project the alternator along with the voltage regulator are the key components of the electrical system that charges the battery when the battery quits chargin it's one of these two components normally people will replace the cheap voltage regulator but they don't want to replace this more expensive part that's kind of difficult to get to in order to get to the alternator you need to remove the flywheel in order to remove the flywheel you need a flywheel removal tool the main symptom of my mower was the amp meter was showing zero or a negative number a negative number means the battery's being drained that ant meter should be positive saying the battery's being charged based on the troubleshooting chart in my owners manual there are four reasons why my battery would not charge I checked out the battery it was bad actually so I need a new battery but all the cabling was correct so the issue must be with the voltage regulator but I swapped that out with a good one so now I knew it was my alternator so that this project is to replace my alternator this video clip shows how I have my trickle charger set up to my bad battery just so I could charge it to get through this part of the project so I don't have to buy a new battery till next spring the voltage regulator is cheap and easy to replace so I went ahead and did that just to verify it wasn't the problem before I spent the bigger money and the bigger time and a bigger effort on replacing the alternator these next few pictures so the different parts of the engine that I had to remove in order to gain access to the flywheel later on this video actually show video clips of me reinstalling these pieces of the engine so you get it just for how long it takes and how much difficulty it takes to get this job done this section contains a lot of video clips that describes and shows the different process of procedures it takes to remove the flywheel from your Briggs and Stratton engine alright so ordered the Briggs & Stratton flywheel removal tool off the internet I got it Amazon Prime I got the one for the overhead valve engine basically the mower so it's the large I'll put a better picture of that but it's code 19 203 so this is the main bracket and to sit up here like that and then it comes with sae bolts SAE boats and metric boats they're color coded based on the size of the holes you have okay so we've established that these threaded holes in my flywheel they're SAE or English threads so I choose the chrome or silver based boats instead of a radish or bronze which are metric so threaded a nut on top will use that to actually do the tension and then I put a nut down here about an inch up and did it to both sides the bolt here on my fly will have a bolt and seven the bolt all right once I use my pneumatic can't pop off this I screwed it all the way down and I backed it off three turns and now I'm just gonna set this on top like this and screw these in a thread of the nut on the bolt put the bolt through the pulley and then I put it nut on the bottom be honest with you I'm not hundred percent sure with this net on the bottom or we're not gonna really use it it says to put it in inch up I did that and then I got each of the two bolts started in in there threaded holes at that point you're supposed to screw these bolts eight turns into your flywheel so each boats got a little notch on it so that's how I'm using to determine how many times I've threaded it through stub my screw these in eight turns each and I'll do a couple each way just try keep them and sequence going down so there's one two one two one three four three four five six five six [Music] and a seven and that's getting tight so the reason it's tight is because these nuts came down so I gotta loosen those nuts off so I was seven that's eight seven eight I'm going to just manually bring these nuts down towards on the black part so there we are it's roughly each side screwed in there eight so what's important is this black piece here this pulley needs to be level because we're going to start tightening these boats which is gonna press this pulley down and pull the flywheel pulley up like that in sequence and we want to do it a couple turns at a time on each one to try to keep the same level to pull it up all right we got the Briggs & Stratton 500 pulley installed on my flywheel now we're just gonna start tightening these bolts down a couple turns and that's gonna pull this thing off when it when it frees up it should go pop we should see it and physically here okay so so this one I'm just gonna go that's tight right there that's half a turn [Music] that's half a turn [Music] [Music] now if you watch here inside tighten these bolts this whole thing spinning what's happening is the drive shaft spinning so I'm gonna have to get in a different position when I'm gonna hold the drive shaft with a wrench underneath the engine and then tighten these bolts down all right so my wrench on the drive shaft over here underneath the engine and I'm gonna try to do this again so just there we go up there we go probably heard a pop oh yeah so I get that out from there so I keep going down that pop and when I did it by the way I can feel a lot of pressure release a lot of energy so it's loose see how it's loose now I'll have this off in a second I'm just pulling it up at this point the flywheel is loosed so I'm going to take the flywheel removal off which is just unscrewing these two boats from the threaded holes in the flywheel second off I'm going to take this nut off that remember I've already loosened it with the impact wrench and then this will pop off now one thing to note in here there's a flywheel key in here so I want to make sure I don't lose that and it wants to come out alright so this is off that's my flywheel these are all the magnets on the flywheel and the whole reason I'm doing this flywheel removal by the way here is the key it goes in there like that and I'm going to take this off this is the key I'm going to put in a safe place because I've got to put it back the key is of if you hit your drive shaft on something it is sheer that key instead of bending you know hopefully doesn't bend your drive shaft so you just have to go to the store you'll have to buy these keys they're nothing to them and then you have to remove your flywheel and put the key back in you're good to go again but here's my alternator so this is what I think it's faulty is it it is not charging my battery so the whole really took the flywheel off was to get to this alternator [Music] so we have by taking the flywheel off we've now exposed the alternator the alternator is attached with four nuts bolts in our it's a quarter-inch nut driver I'll take those off there's also two wires coming off the alternator one is the ground and then one is a bullet and it's screwed into the voltage regulator and then anothers the live wire that's got the that it's a bullet connector that goes to the voltage regulator and they go through a little harness clip here I won't show that part of the removal it's pretty straightforward but I'll show disconnecting it now if you can tell this is filthy filthy dirty he's got dirt oil grass everything in this I'll clean this up but this I don't see any apparent issues there's no burn or anything but this thing is filthy so we'll replace it with a new one all right we have a remove the four nuts the bolts rather the four bolts from the alternator they look like that remove them with a quarter-inch nut driver I store all my loose nuts and bolts and everything the drive shaft keys in here I don't lose them at this point the alternator is loose other than those two wires ones the ground is connected to the cell voltage regular later and the other one is the live wire that goes to the voltage regulator then this just if you gently this will just there goes gently just pulls up there's that wires tell you about I have to release a bolt for the harness but I'll take this I'll go order me another one it'll come in a couple days I'll clean this all of this up I'll put the new one in and we'll put it all back together and see how it runs [Music] all right I got the brand new alternator came in looks nice no crispy parts it's got the 1-1 lead to go to the voltage regulator the bullet connector and it's a white wire that will match up with the white wire on the voltage voltage regulator so I was gonna place this on the post there's four posts I've cleaned this all up now I'm gonna put it on the four post like so then this wire this yellow wire I'm going to feed down through a harness holds the wire in place and it's down here with plenty of room to get to the bullet connector on the voltage regulator so the new alternator came with some screws but I'm gonna use these bolts that came off the old one I like to use the boats because I can use a nut driver on it wear this in the screws you have to use a Phillips screw driver and you run the risk of stripping them out someday if you ever have to take this off years from now and uh it's just easier I think it's so let's put these on so as the saying goes these four bolts they're snug but tight the only other trick is make sure the wire is on the underside you don't want to be the wire on the top so the wire going to the voltage regulator is underneath and we just have to make sure this base is called the stator it's not touching anywhere on the casing the engine casing and that all looks good so we are good to go alright next I'm going to install my flywheel I've cleaned all the grass and crud out of it this is pretty heavy it's it's a magnet and once I get it close to these magnets on the ultimate it's gonna suck it down so I'm trying to line it up with the key there's the key hole on the flywheel and the key hole right here on the drive shaft and once I line it up they'll slip by key into it right there I could fill the magnets pulling it down [Music] and there we go ok that's lined up there's also so where's the keys keys in my little parts slip dead in push it down that is in there ok and then I'm going to take this is the bolt keeps my flywheel on I'll manually screw that in hand tighten it ok that's hand tightened and just make sure this freely turn so it doesn't hit any part ok that's good hmm so now I'm going to take my impact wrench and it's got a 15 16 socket on it and I've got it going and forward so to tighten it put that on there I can see this moving I think it's really supposed to be like a hundred pounds of torque so we are good to go we'll go to the next step just to clarify something when you're reinstalling the flywheel and you install that flywheel nut or a flywheel bolt and I was using my my impact wrench I made statements something about well just use your impact wrench that's great to start off with but you really need you also use your torque wrench and you want to set your torque where inst about a hundred pounds of torque and you want to torque that nut and that bolt down after we put the flywheel on we'll put the fan engine dance of plastic part she's got two bolts these bolts will screw into where we had the flywheel removal tool it just sits on there like that these bolts are Starr boats so I have to use a star bit to get them out to tighten them up so I just put them both in initially by hand just a socket and we'll hand tighten now we'll just use the socket to tighten them down snug and firm no stripping all right that's good after we install the plastic fan housing for the engine will install the grill and uh grill is attached through four screws these are TT screws so I had to use another T screw bit and let's install these first me if the hand manually tighten them down and first Tuesday of the month so we get to hear a siren go off for the emergency broadcast system once I hand tighten these four screws down I'll just gotta get a my screwdriver attachment to these and I'll just manually tighten them up once again firm I don't want to strip it it's screws are going to something plastic one more final that's tunt tug tight tight okay that's done move on to the next part the next step is we're going to put the engine cowling on or at the engine housing this is going to have two bolts on the front that are stars so I'm going to use a star socket to drive at star driver and then there's two in the back that I'll have to tighten up and then pour the fuel system the fuel pump this screw in right here they'll go on then yeah this is gonna be a lot of different parts moving things around making sure everything's set right so I'm not gonna film this I'll just come back [Music] alright next we're going to install the air filter and by the way this is dirty it's into the seasons fall when I do my spring maintenance change the OL the filter and the gas filter and the oil filter to all I'll put a new air filter into this but this is get me through the last couple of weeks of this fall season and so that just put the cover on snap it closed all right next I'm gonna go get a battery I've got another ride-along warrants I'm gonna go take the battery for a nap plug it in and we'll see how it goes the most frustrating thing about this project was the documentation and the manual didn't match up with itself the parks listing didn't agree with the schematics the schematics didn't agree with this explosion charged the part diagrams didn't agree with the part numbers nothing agreed with each other so I end up winging it I just looked at the parts that were already installed on the mower and I went out on the internet and found pictures of those and then I got the part numbers for those and then I ordered those parts and that's how I finally determined what parts to reinstall on the lawnmower alright that wraps up this video on how to replace an alternator on a Briggs and Stratton engine that's used to power a riding lawn mower the real tricky part of this project was overcoming the documentation for the riding lawn mower and its engine parts in the schematics as well as the parts listing and those parts were actually installed on the riding lawnmower they were all in conflict another tricky part was removing the flywheel the alternator is located underneath the flywheel to get the flywheel off I had to order another tool a flywheel removal tool and this was only 13 dollars so it wasn't a big expense it's just I didn't have one once I got it in I wasn't able to remove the flywheel and then have access to the alternator to overcome the conflicts and the documentation and the schematics and the parts list versus what was installed on a lawn mower I had to pass to take I could just replace the parts to run a lawn mower with like glass parts or I could replace the part with those that are in the parts listing I wasn't too confident that the parts and the parked listings would work together and I wasn't too confident that the parts in the parts diagram the explosion diagram would work together so I just decided to replace the parts with those that were already installed on the mower using a multimeter in the ant meter gauge on the lawn mower helped me to identify what was the problem isolate the problem and also verify that I properly fixed the problem hopefully you learn something from this video hopefully it will empower you to go out and work on your riding lawnmower on your briggs and stratton engine on your ride lawnmower to get automatic alerts of when i add content to my youtube channel click on the red subscribe button below if you like this video click on the thumbs up if you dislike this video click on the thumbs down leave any feedback you have in the comment section below alright thanks for watching have a great day go out there and cut your grass with your ride-along war and that briggs and stratton engine [Music] [Music]

Channel: Scott Farrar

Views: 120,807

Keywords: Briggs & Stratton, 18.5HP, Voltage Regulator, Alternator, Riding Mower, Craftsman, Model 917.273640, Engine Model 31P77, Engine Type 0348-E1, Craftsman Lawn Tractor, Electric Start, Automatic Transmission, 42 inch Mowing Deck, Briggs and Stratton Engine, Part Number 691188, Part Number 696459, Part Number 592829, Fly Wheel Removal Tool, Part Number 19203, Flywheel Removal Tool

Id: RwUEmVwnlB4

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 13 2018