Introduction: How-To: Supercede an Alternator

Strapped for cash this holiday flavor? Replacing an alternator can toll you several hundred bucks at the local repair shop, but information technology's ane of the simplest repairs yous tin do at home. With a few tools and about an hour you tin can swap it out yourself -- and proceed your dough in your pocket where it belongs.

Note: As this is a Craftsman-sponsored project, you'll notice a number of Craftsman tools in the photos, including Cantankerous Forcefulness Wrenches. But hither's a secret: we already owned 'em all. They're the same tools we'd have used if they weren't sponsors. Actually!

Step 1: Disconnect the Battery

First and well-nigh importantly: disconnect the battery. At that place may be several wires or merely one wire on your alternator, but residual bodacious that one of them is hot. If you don't disconnect the battery, you're very probable to end up grounding a alive wire during the procedure. This causes cause all manner of bad things to occur -- not the to the lowest degree of which is giving you quite a shock.

Pace 2: Disconnect the Wires

Now that the battery is out of the way disconnect the wire or wires from the back of the alternator. This is usually a very simple process but if you're unsure every bit to where they go, characterization them every bit y'all take them loose.

Step three: Remove the Belt From the Pulley

Every project has a tough spot, and this is the tough spot for alternator replacement: remove the chugalug from the caster. Somewhere on your vehicle there is a tensioner caster. You'll need to move it enough to sideslip the chugalug off the pulley. Our '95 GMC has a standard jump-loaded GM tensioner that required us to pull it back with a wrench. On some vehicles you'll find screw-type or rod-end blazon tensioners that apply tension by turning a bolt through threads to increase/decrease the length of a rod. In this case, just plough the bolt/rod-finish with a wrench or socket until information technology releases enough tension to let you to remove the belt.

In our case we grabbed a Craftsman 17mm Cantankerous Force wrench and pushed hard. Normally that would exist a pretty painful feel, but the Cross Force was designed for merely such a situation. There's a ninety-caste twist in the center of the Cantankerous Force wrenches, and so you finish up pushing on a apartment surface. The result: we could push harder without discomfort. And so we just laid into it and the belt came free.

Footstep four: Remove Bolts

Once the belt is off just remove whatever bolts connect the alternator to the subclass and you're good to get. Our model required the removal of three bolts: i at the front and 2 at the rear.

Step 5: Halfway There

With the old alternator in your mitt you're half way dwelling house. You'll probable observe getting the new 1 back in goes much faster since you lot already know what size the bolt heads are and where everything is.

Pace vi: Examine the Replacement

Examine the replacement unit of measurement before reassembly and make sure it volition work for your application. Our replacement was a junkyard find then it is keen deal dirtier still information technology has the reward of actually working -- a significant improvement over our previous busted unit.

Step 7: Opposite the Removal Steps

To complete the project just reverse the removal steps paying careful attending to belt routing and tensioning. Hell, even if you bought the set of Cross Force wrenches for the job you'd still be hundreds ahead of the toll of what a store would charge -- and you go some new tools out of information technology. We tin think of far worse outcomes.

Cross Force Wrenches

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