How to Replace an Alternator

Hey guys ChrisFix here and today im going to show you how to replace a alternator this is a really simple job that you can do yourself in most cases there's no special tools and to figure out how easy the job is going to be all you have to do is locate your alternator in my truck you can see the alternator is right at the top which makes it really easy to get to if your alternator's near the top of the engine the job is going to be simple if the alternator is buried it could be more difficult if you're not sure if your alternator is bad i have a video that shows you how to test an alternator so check that out it's really simple and you could do it yourself a link to that video will be in the description here's where my alternators having a problem when the engine goes about four thousand rpms the battery light comes on and the voltmeter that's built into my truck it just drops there should be 14.2 volts will not even getting that I'm getting like 10 volts nine volts once the RPM to about four thousand rpms so not only is the alternator shot but i'm running a large light bar up top some lights in the rear as well as off road lights in the front so I want a larger alternator to keep up with my electrical demand stock alternators 95 amps and the new alternator is a hundred and thirty amps and if you're curious to where I got this alternator I'll go put a link in description below as always that pretty good prices and they got to me really quickly so let's go get started and changing this out here all the tools you need to do the job we have a ratchet extension and different sized sockets metal wire brush flathead screwdriver and PCs and we have a torque wrench breaker bar and the only specialty tool that you don't really need but i have is this serpentine belt tool that helps get the serpentine belt off you could always just use your breaker bar or a long wrench so let's begin anytime you work on the electrical system the first thing you want to do especially when changing out the alternator take off the negative terminal on your battery make sure it's not getting grounded out now you're good to work on the alternator the next step is you need to access your alternator so try to make your life easier and make as much room as possible we really don't want to take off this coolant hose because then you get cool and everywhere but what we can do is take off this intake hose which is really easy to do to get the intake hose off there is a hose clamp right over here use a flathead screwdriver now we're just going to disconnect this hose that's over here and just wiggle this off good we come over here to our mass air flow sensor disconnect the little mass air flow sensor electrical clip we could just take this off just like that always always remove your filters you don't damage it and look at that we have easy access right here now let's go take the belt off to remove the belt they do make a special tool that helps remove belts i'll put a link in description to where you can get it you don't need to use this it's just like a long ratchet if you have a breaker bar that's kind of narrow and skinny you can use that or if you have a long wrench in this case this is 15 millimeter and what you're going to do is going to go down into the pulleys and look for the tensioner pulley so you can see right down in here we go over here the tensioner pulley is the spring-loaded pulley right there and that's how you relieve the belt tension to just go down in here get the tool on the end of the bolt of the tensioner and just take it and you pull the ratchet the tool whatever you have towards you and that pushes the pulley against the tensioner spring so you relieve the pressure and you can see now the belt is nice and loose and since we're only taking off the alternator and make your life a lot easier to just take off the belt on the alternator and i'll leave the belt popped in here so it doesn't come apart and unwrapped from around these pollies just in case if it does you can see right here it's got the diagram of how the belts rat around the police now let's go take the alternator off taking the alternator off is really easy you can check your brand-new alternator to see how many bolted has you can see one two and then one at the bottom is 3 so we're going to be looking for three bolts to take off looking at this alternator there's one there's two there's three so we're good to go before we do that I want to check the back of the alternator see what connections you have here you can see that there's three connections that this little one here got a larger clip right here and we have the positive cable coming here I usually like to get these off before I remove the alternator especially since there's plenty of room to get to him back here so let's go do that so the first cable we're going to take off is the red battery cable this is the power from the alternator to the battery runs all the way up over to the battery - 10 millimeter and you suck it over that good although our negative terminal is technically disconnected just cover this up so it doesn't groundout better to be safe than sorry you can even get some black electrical tape if you want but that's good enough ok now we're going to remove this connector and this connector flathead screwdriver might help that's one that's too now if you remove this wiring harness and move it up to the side removing the actual alternator is really easy we'll start off with this front bolt here there's three bolts total going to use a breaker bar with these bolts are kind of tough on here the original alternator cars 2001 so it's pretty old good broke that free will do the bolt that's up here broke that free and then there's one more bolt right back here okay all three bolts are broken free now we can loosen them up all the way it's one that's two and three now i can pull out the old one now what the alternator out we have this alternator bracket here and you just want to get a piece of sandpaper or in this case I have a metal wire brush and just want to clean up the connection where the alternator actually sits on here because the alternator is grounded to the block through this bracket so the better the connection to the alternator the better your electrical system will perform you also want to grab the bolts and clean off the bolts you can see here there's all this white corrosion on the threads here you want to have a good connection so it's good to clean this off and that cleaned up very nicely so we're going to get even better connection now so with all the bolts cleaned up and with the connections here all cleaned up let's go put the new alternator on as always when i'm installing two new parts i like to put them side by side make sure that they look right you can see this alternator is definitely bigger but the bracket mounting spots are the same and the alternator pulley itself is the same size so it looks like we are good to go and just for anybody who's doing this project on a Ford pickup truck or ford SUV or the mazda pickup truck mazda SUV the four hole pattern here indicates the 95 amp alternator and the two hole pattern here indicates a hundred 30 amp alternator just something good to know especially if you're looking for parts in the junkyard you're trying to find this alternator in the junkyard or something you know that's the 130 and then this is the 95 now we're going to get our new alternator put in place one thing you might consider on these bolts as anti-seize just put a little bit on and using just a little bit of anti-seize like that on the threads are just make it that much easier to get off if you ever need to replace this in the future now we'll get our top bolt in you just want to get it started now we're going to get the next to in reason why you just want to get started because you want to be able to move this alternator around to make sure you get the next bolt in its position and then this last one should slide right in just like so now with all three bolts hand tightened and thread it in we could start tightening them down you don't want to tighten them down all the way just get them snug and then we'll talk from them so now that all these are snug we're going to get our torque wrench and set it between 30 and 40 foot pounds i'm doing thirty eight foot pounds 1 2 three now all we have to do is connect these wires connect our intake here and we're ready to go for a test drive plug that in love that in make sure you have a good connection in here to use your metal wire brush just to make sure it's clean or some sandpaper whatever you got take the nut off slip the power cable over the stud and hand-tighten good but make sure you slide this protective boot over that just feels at any water and also prevents any unintentional grounding or arking good so we got our top connected connected that middle one connected and our power line connected make sure that we have our plastic piece here over the alternator it's just the heat shield that protects the alternator from the excess heat now we're just going to get the belt on the alternator and you see it doesn't fit until we pull this good the belt is on here correctly on the rest of the pulleys correctly now we can take off our belt tool just inspect to make sure that the belt is on all the pulleys correctly it's in the middle it's not on the edge plus the belt was a little loose looks good see if it's right on perfect everything looks good on the tensioner now let's put on the air intake and let's go for a rod drop our filter back in place this clicks in just like so you want to make sure that this hose goes all the way around your intake just like so there's no gap here now we can get our flat head screwdriver to tighten this down good remember to connect our PCV hose here good make sure you plug in the mass air flow sensor one last thing to do connect our negative terminal and let's go for a ride all right let's start it up and see what we get so we've been driving around for a few minutes and I'm gonna slow down here and give it gas to drop a gear and hit over four thousand rpms beautiful everything is working perfectly and that is a job well done and that's how you properly replace an alternator hopefully this video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber what are you waiting for hit that subscribe button up on the screen are going to be a bunch of videos to get to those videos you can click on the screen or follow the links in the description

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 2,723,396

Keywords: Alternator, alternator replacement, how to replace an alternator, alternator testing, alternator noise, alternator problems, alternator generator, how to replace an alternator on a ford f150, how to replace an alternator on a nissan maxima, how to replace an alternator on a honda civic, how to change an alternator, how to rebuild an alternator, How to Change (remove & replace) an Alternator, Ford ranger, mazda b3000

Id: XC8W9RHGTMI

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2015