And the "one size fits all" Dorman brackets that used to come with the intakes have the fuel line cover as well.

Let's just all agree it should stay on the car

Take the bracket off and leave it off. People can "theorize" all day, but nothing's going to happen. I drove my car for 4 years without a bracket. Many aftermarket intake manifolds don't even have a place to put one of the crown vic alternator brackets, and there's thousands upon thousands of people driving around without the brackets.

Well, seems opinions and/or experiences are all over the map ....

Again, I thank all of you .....

Lots of good points ... I was a fixin' to leave for a 1200 mile round trip to visit when I was writing.

As it is, I left my "modded" bracket with the 1/2" dia holes filled with short pieces of 1/4" FI hose as bushings and the 4 bolts "snugged up", NOT tightly.

They stayed "snugged up" on the way down. When I get home I'll go ahead and get the new Fel Pro intake gasket set and swap on my new style Ford intake with alum X-over.

Meanwhile, car knocked down 25-26 mpg and despite heat, 191-192 degrees coolant and trans stayed about 159-162 degrees whole way down Thursday (stock and aux cooler).
That J-mod I did last week .... worked magnificently, just firm and sure, no bad jerking shifts.

Removing it is plainly just a bad idea.

From ... (who has passed on, but was a source of massive amounts of CV info):


"Note: The alternator upper bracket in the 1998+ cars serves two purposes. It's a crash bracket to protect the fuel rail in a really high energy frontal collision. It also holds the alternator stationary so the bottom mounting bolts aren't overloaded. The normal mounting load on this part is very minimal, and some people have run their crownvics without this bracket installed for short periods of time without a problem. Some have even run their cars for years without the top alternator bracket installed, but others have had the bottom two bolts break leaving them stranded on the side of the road without any front engine drive accessories rotating anymore. Do note that without the waterpump spinning, engine coolant will really heatup and your engine could be damaged beyond economic repair or seize up all together."

Think of all the extra stress it's placing on the alternator pulley/rotor and the tensioner as well...

I don't know why I didn't think of this before .... but just a few days ago as I was doing some maintenance on my 1995 Thunderbird LX 4.6 I suddenly recalled this very thread and my opening post asking a question about alternator top bracket delete.



The '94 and '95 Thunderbirds with 4.6 have a alternator that relies on only two bolts at the bottom into same engine casting for support. There is no upper stay.



I don't know why the Merc's aluminum is so "speckled" looking? I also will look at pulley offset in relation to mounting, the '95 T-bird serpentine belt may be closer to the engine front cover? I also know that much bigger alternators were available on the CVs and G<Ms than on the T-birds.



Just thinking .... for the record ..... mine is still in place as described earlier.

That is typically corrosion caused by road salt.

There is an upper bracket on the aluminum intake/3G alternator cars like the early 4.6 MN12s and Panthers. It is similar to the one for the plastic intake/3G cars like the 96+ MN12s and Panthers.

The mounting point on the alternator is on the back, not the top like 4G/6G etc.



Back of a 3G alternator, the bump out with the threaded hole is where they mount. The actual bracket on the aluminum intake is quite small, the mount points on the intake are close together, not like the plastic intake. It also doesn't have the arms that go over the top of the alternator to support the plug wires or the big wire to the battery.

OK, you are right. I missed that bracket, it's hidden pretty well.

Thanks!

USE BACK BRACKET ON ALTERNATOR !!!

(just a note to anyone wanting my final word on the subject)




Back in early 2000s we ran through one snow storm coming home from Georgia at Christmas and I ran her through a car wash and hosed it off before I got home, this corrosion was a few years after that.

Could have been that late May 2008 when we were in SW Colorado and left Cortez that morning headed east and got up into some mountains and ran into a real snow storm with snow plows .... they might have been spreading stuff too? This corrosion showed itself after that some time.

Possibly just a result of the "dry salt" dust we sometimes see after a snow and there's salt on the roadway that blows up? I expect it on a duty car like that 2006 CVPI was.

It looks awful.