Lately, my alternator has been charging on an off. So yesterday I stopped by a place that rebuilds alternators and picked up the proper parts to rebuild by existing alternator. I picked up the front and rear bearing and the voltage regulator with the brushes. It turns out when I took it apart that the brushes had cracked due to the heat. I replaced all the necessary parts and put it back together and it chages like a charm now! The total cost for all the parts was about $25.00. It sure beats paying almost $200.00 for a rebuilt POS. I've included some pictures of the alternator apart. Enjoy!


New Voltage Regulator with Brushes

Old Voltage Regulator with Broken Brushes

New Rear Bearing Pressed On

New Front Bearing in Housing Assembly

Good to hear you're happy with the results.

Jay, congratulations, so few people would even attempt rebuilding an alternator. Last time I ventured into a generator it was DC not AC. This forum is so useful for this sort of information.

Congratulations!

Excellant work. 99% of the time, either the brushes of the regulator are bad, just as you found out.

$175 profit is not bad on a $200 part eh?

Count in labor and the years of technical experience in knowing how to easily and reliably fix it and.... less profit, but still a ton. I know. Sorry to steal topic... is it possible to rebuild an alt to have more output? Or would I be better off finding a low mileage PI alternator with the 200 amp output?

to up the amperage you'd have to rewind it...
there are custom shops that can do this, or if you're really an electronics geek, you could try it yourself (my old college roommate looked up the specs to do the one on his chevy, but he never got around to it)

I'm not too sure with this one. I think all you would have to do is change the voltage regulator with a 200 amp one and you would have a 200 amp alternator. I believe the voltage regulator is what controls the amps and voltage that comes out of an alternator. Can someone here chime in on this one! The alternator is definately very easy to rebuild and is well worth your time and money. When you buy a rebuilt alternator from Autozone, Pepboys, ect. All they replace are the voltage regulator with brushes, the front and rear bearings, and they clean up the alternator so it looks new. The whole process costs them less than $25.00 to do and they average a nice profit of between $150 to $200.

Do you guys know of any good sources to buy the parts to rebuild our alternators?

http://www.alternatorparts.com/ford_alt_repair_upgrade_kits.htm

In order to increase the OUTPUT, you absolutely must rewind it with larger wire, and fewer turns of it.

The regulator only controls voltage, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the amperage output, although higher amperage alternators may use a different regulator to get the charging alogrythm correct.