CruiseOrlando
Conveniently Enhanced
For those of you who saw it, I recently pulled my stock alternator out after it quit and replaced the brushes in it. A very detailed how-to is over here for that:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/606291-alternator-clean-rebuild.html
Anyway, I sometimes just can't leave well enough alone, and I'd bought Photoman's 130/150A alternator bracket, so I figured while I had the battery out and all I might as well upgrade the alternator. And oh, the wiring too. I came pretty close to doing my PHH at the same time as well, but ran out of time...
So I found an alternator out of a 04 Sequoia, 150A, in a local junk yard. $65 later it was mine. I ran down to the local auto parts store to test it, and it came up good - although they couldn't tell me the output, all they could verify is that it was working. I ordered new brushes and some other semi-needed parts from CDan (hey, gotta make it worthwhile, right?!?). I pulled the old alternator out (again), and got ready to dig into the new one.
Side by side:
Impact gun makes short work of taking off the pulleys:
And just like the standard alternator, take the a few screws on the back (the three 8mm in the middle):
to reveal the brush assembly off the back. Remove the two philips screws, and you can pull off the brushes. I took a picture of the shaft on the rotor of this alternator as well. According to the junk yard, it came off a truck with 86K miles on it:
When I pulled the brushes, I was glad I'd ordered the new one. Well, after this job was over, I would have been extremely pissed off at myself if I hadn't. So if you're doing this job, and you buy a used one, REPLACE THE BRUSHES!
Just for reference, this is a comparison for the brushes on the stock alternator:
The next step was to pull the generator connector apart and re-do the wires. Part of the reason I decided to change up to the 150A was the fact that my old plug broke on me when I took it off the stock alternator. This was further reenforced when I tried to remove the pins, but basically the entire connector started breaking apart into small plastic bits. It was time to go. (A replacement stock generator plug was also part of my box from CDan). Silly me also ordered a new plug from CDan before really looking in the package from Photoman. Guess what he also gives you... thanks Photoman!
By the way, if you don't know, a tool like this is how you pull the pins without destroying the plug (assuming it's not too far gone like mine was):
Once you get the plug separated from the wires, you end up with something like this:
And yes, there is a specific order you have to put them in the new plug - that's all in the main thread Photoman started years ago. Skip ahead to this post to see what I'm talking about:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-...ock-alternator-130-150-amp-2.html#post3161676
Once all of that was done, it got to the fun part - making new wires! I also upgraded my battery to the Sears DHP P4 - problem is, while it was physically fine to fit in the battery box, the terminals were on the bumper side, not the firewall side. BUT it also came with front posts, which I wanted to use for my winch. This meant I also had to extend the starter cable as well as the ground that went to the engine block.
At first I bought some aluminum wire, but after thinking more about it, I decided to abandon that in favor for some welding wire. I was going with 1/0 for the aluminum, but stepped down to a more reasonable #2AWG (copper) for the starter and ground wires. For the alternator, my calculations told me a #4AWG was sufficient for the max current it could throw out.
While all that was fine and good, I started working into the fusible link issue. I went round and round with this one - by all the charts, I should be using a #8AWG fusible link with a #4AWG wire for the alternator. Problem is, they really don't make such a thing (probably for good reason). So I bought some #12, and figured I'd just make my own fusible link wires - besides, the ones I had were in awful shape anyway.
For the starter wire, I took a #2 lug and soldered it onto the end:
Then I put heat-shrink over the ends, and grabbed one of these rubber hood from a local shop, and it barely fit on the end - but it did a great job of helping insulate from the starter:
The ground wire for the engine block got a #2 lug and heat shrink - here it is before I wrapped it up:
Now, the alternator posed a different problem for the main +12V feed. The OEM wire is a #10, I think. It actually has two different wires going into it, one that runs off into the main wiring harness somewhere (the main fuse block, I think). So I pulled all the loom wrap off of the wiring around the battery bay to get a better idea of what I was working with.
Here you can see the original OEM lug, with the two wires coming into it:
So I took apart the OEM lug, and threw away the main lead that went to the battery/fusible link box, and took some of my #4 and made a new lug:
After I soldered it up and added my heat-shrink to it:
Then I gave it a little hoodie, too. In retrospect, I'm not so sure I'd do this again:
It ended up being a real pain in the ass to get hooked up onto the alternator with that damn hood on it. I ended up bending the lug 90' due to the way the new alternator went in.
By the way, I'm not going to get into how much of a pain the new alternator is to get in. Photoman does a great job in his kit of explaining all of that, and there are a ton of other posts already - I'm more focused here on the wiring, since everyone seems to have a different take on that one. But yes, getting the 150A in there isn't exactly fun.
Once I had all that done, I re-wrapped all the OEM wiring harnesses up, then put the battery box back in to take more accurate measurements for the leads. This is when I discovered I couldn't hook up my winch because of some of the angles of the fusible link the winch has on it, so I'll do something else there. I also started thinking more and more about the fusible links, and finally decided that I didn't want to muck with the OEM stuff. I figured that I should probably be just fine, and I certainly don't know as much as the engineers that put this rig together. But at this point I'd been dinking around for three weekends on this, and I needed to get my truck back on the road. So I picked up a plastic work box, and decided to take a small piece of #4, then extend it so that the OEM fusible links could reach, and I'd attach it all in a plastic workbox for now. Later on I'll probably find something better, much like how the OEM fusible links come together.
So I took a small bit of #4, soldered on a 3/8 lug on one side and a 5/16 lug on the other, then used heat shrink and taped it up red just to make sure there were no misakes about it:
I also didn't mention that I got military terminals as well, because I was tied of messing around with the crap that comes from the local auto parts stores. Besides, how else can you make a big ole wire like #2 look cool if you have it hooked up to some dinky terminal?!?
So here's my box, with some of the OEM fusible links back in, and a couple of my own. I'm ordering new links tomorrow, so I'll have to wait on that. I also have my #10 that goes back into the cab where I have some other things running off (it's fused separately):
(end part 1)
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/606291-alternator-clean-rebuild.html
Anyway, I sometimes just can't leave well enough alone, and I'd bought Photoman's 130/150A alternator bracket, so I figured while I had the battery out and all I might as well upgrade the alternator. And oh, the wiring too. I came pretty close to doing my PHH at the same time as well, but ran out of time...
So I found an alternator out of a 04 Sequoia, 150A, in a local junk yard. $65 later it was mine. I ran down to the local auto parts store to test it, and it came up good - although they couldn't tell me the output, all they could verify is that it was working. I ordered new brushes and some other semi-needed parts from CDan (hey, gotta make it worthwhile, right?!?). I pulled the old alternator out (again), and got ready to dig into the new one.
Side by side:
Impact gun makes short work of taking off the pulleys:
And just like the standard alternator, take the a few screws on the back (the three 8mm in the middle):
to reveal the brush assembly off the back. Remove the two philips screws, and you can pull off the brushes. I took a picture of the shaft on the rotor of this alternator as well. According to the junk yard, it came off a truck with 86K miles on it:
When I pulled the brushes, I was glad I'd ordered the new one. Well, after this job was over, I would have been extremely pissed off at myself if I hadn't. So if you're doing this job, and you buy a used one, REPLACE THE BRUSHES!
Just for reference, this is a comparison for the brushes on the stock alternator:
The next step was to pull the generator connector apart and re-do the wires. Part of the reason I decided to change up to the 150A was the fact that my old plug broke on me when I took it off the stock alternator. This was further reenforced when I tried to remove the pins, but basically the entire connector started breaking apart into small plastic bits. It was time to go. (A replacement stock generator plug was also part of my box from CDan). Silly me also ordered a new plug from CDan before really looking in the package from Photoman. Guess what he also gives you... thanks Photoman!
By the way, if you don't know, a tool like this is how you pull the pins without destroying the plug (assuming it's not too far gone like mine was):
Once you get the plug separated from the wires, you end up with something like this:
And yes, there is a specific order you have to put them in the new plug - that's all in the main thread Photoman started years ago. Skip ahead to this post to see what I'm talking about:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-...ock-alternator-130-150-amp-2.html#post3161676
Once all of that was done, it got to the fun part - making new wires! I also upgraded my battery to the Sears DHP P4 - problem is, while it was physically fine to fit in the battery box, the terminals were on the bumper side, not the firewall side. BUT it also came with front posts, which I wanted to use for my winch. This meant I also had to extend the starter cable as well as the ground that went to the engine block.
At first I bought some aluminum wire, but after thinking more about it, I decided to abandon that in favor for some welding wire. I was going with 1/0 for the aluminum, but stepped down to a more reasonable #2AWG (copper) for the starter and ground wires. For the alternator, my calculations told me a #4AWG was sufficient for the max current it could throw out.
While all that was fine and good, I started working into the fusible link issue. I went round and round with this one - by all the charts, I should be using a #8AWG fusible link with a #4AWG wire for the alternator. Problem is, they really don't make such a thing (probably for good reason). So I bought some #12, and figured I'd just make my own fusible link wires - besides, the ones I had were in awful shape anyway.
For the starter wire, I took a #2 lug and soldered it onto the end:
Then I put heat-shrink over the ends, and grabbed one of these rubber hood from a local shop, and it barely fit on the end - but it did a great job of helping insulate from the starter:
The ground wire for the engine block got a #2 lug and heat shrink - here it is before I wrapped it up:
Now, the alternator posed a different problem for the main +12V feed. The OEM wire is a #10, I think. It actually has two different wires going into it, one that runs off into the main wiring harness somewhere (the main fuse block, I think). So I pulled all the loom wrap off of the wiring around the battery bay to get a better idea of what I was working with.
Here you can see the original OEM lug, with the two wires coming into it:
So I took apart the OEM lug, and threw away the main lead that went to the battery/fusible link box, and took some of my #4 and made a new lug:
After I soldered it up and added my heat-shrink to it:
Then I gave it a little hoodie, too. In retrospect, I'm not so sure I'd do this again:
It ended up being a real pain in the ass to get hooked up onto the alternator with that damn hood on it. I ended up bending the lug 90' due to the way the new alternator went in.
By the way, I'm not going to get into how much of a pain the new alternator is to get in. Photoman does a great job in his kit of explaining all of that, and there are a ton of other posts already - I'm more focused here on the wiring, since everyone seems to have a different take on that one. But yes, getting the 150A in there isn't exactly fun.
Once I had all that done, I re-wrapped all the OEM wiring harnesses up, then put the battery box back in to take more accurate measurements for the leads. This is when I discovered I couldn't hook up my winch because of some of the angles of the fusible link the winch has on it, so I'll do something else there. I also started thinking more and more about the fusible links, and finally decided that I didn't want to muck with the OEM stuff. I figured that I should probably be just fine, and I certainly don't know as much as the engineers that put this rig together. But at this point I'd been dinking around for three weekends on this, and I needed to get my truck back on the road. So I picked up a plastic work box, and decided to take a small piece of #4, then extend it so that the OEM fusible links could reach, and I'd attach it all in a plastic workbox for now. Later on I'll probably find something better, much like how the OEM fusible links come together.
So I took a small bit of #4, soldered on a 3/8 lug on one side and a 5/16 lug on the other, then used heat shrink and taped it up red just to make sure there were no misakes about it:
I also didn't mention that I got military terminals as well, because I was tied of messing around with the crap that comes from the local auto parts stores. Besides, how else can you make a big ole wire like #2 look cool if you have it hooked up to some dinky terminal?!?
So here's my box, with some of the OEM fusible links back in, and a couple of my own. I'm ordering new links tomorrow, so I'll have to wait on that. I also have my #10 that goes back into the cab where I have some other things running off (it's fused separately):
(end part 1)
