Nah it's slippery enough and open on the sides - not too worried about it retaining anything, and the little bit that does stay up there who cares?

You cannot encase the alternator with a shell - it puts off WAY too much heat - needs to be a free-air design to keep it from burning up. Best thing to do is relocate it up top in place of the A/C compressor if you're that worried about it.

 

Meant to quote this.

 

Okay I cleaned out my alt as well as I could with water and then went nuts with WD40 on it and it revived it for about 20 minutes and then kind of stopped putting out again. ah...

 

Change it out. The rectifier is probably going bad or the brushes are worn out.

 

Woo. Got it running and took it down to the hand wash and put the high pressure spray thing down on top of the alt and blasted it and my friend said the voltage immediately rose and I haven't had any issues with it in the past day! Happy New Year

 

great its working again try and find a spare in the junk yard just incase our alternators re kinda costly with the economy the way it is it stings to shell out that big a chunk a change at least it does for me jm2cw...and happy new year to you to...

 

Yes definitely will be searchin the yards around here for a spare alty

 

If you cleaned it out with water I would pull it, disassemble, and hose all the parts down with electric parts cleaner, then reassemble. Not sure whether the thing uses sealed bearings or bushings (alts that I've worked on typically have a bearing on the drive end and a bushing on the other end) if a bushing is present I would put some lube on that sucker to keep it nice, there's often a piece of felt behind it to hold oil and you might have washed it all out. Also I'm thinking maybe the brush holders are gunked up and you want to make sure they're nice and dry so they don't rust and seize up again. Besides, you always wanted to see what the inside of an alternator looks like, didn't you?

You'll need an impact wrench to get the pulley off, more likely. I've managed to get some apart with hand tools, but it usually involves, um, questionable procedures.

I'd be tempted to replace the drive end bearing at this point. Even though it's "sealed" it's already been wet a couple times. Check with your FLAPS and see if they sell the bearing separately, or a "rebuild kit" which is usually bearings, brushes, rectifier etc. and should not be that expensive.

I am not a big fan of parts store reman alternators and starters. I've had better luck fixing the OEM stuff myself, and if something is really hosed beyond my ability to fix, I would prefer to spend more money and take it to a real auto electric shop that will rebuild the stuff in house for you. (some of the vehicles I've had that's been my only option anyway, but I digress... you priced a starter for a Porsche lately?)

 

Ha! Well I'm using this one until it poops out for good and then using a spare from the junkyard!