Thursday 7 March 2013

New Alternator

My Lucas alternator has definitely been sounding a little off recently and figured maybe the bearings were getting to the end of their life and was the reason I had been having an annoying whistling sound, so I ordered up a replacement from James Paddock.

It arrived next day which was good as I only went for the standard free delivery and came complete with the fan and pulley.

My Ragdoll cat was also very delighted with the new arrival
 I thought installing the thing would be very straight forward and only take a few minutes. Remebering to disconnect the battery before carrying out any electrical work I set about removing the wiring connector from the rear. Its held in place with a retaining clip and once removed I thought it would pull straight off but I couldn't get it to budge.

I removed the cap to see if there was any reason this thing wouldnt easily pull off
In the end I posted on Club Triumph forum for some advice as I had visions of broken plastic coming. It was confirmed it should just pull off so I gave it some serious pulling and eventually it did come off.

The offending article eventually pulled free
Once the old one was removed it was a simple case of fitting the new one a making sure the alignment between all the pulleys was maintained with the aid of the spacers.

Old one finally off
Everything was retensioned allowing around 3/4" bounce in the fan belt at the half way point between the alternator pulley and water pump pulley.

New one on
Connector back in place
The car fired up again no problem and the alternator is definitely a little quieter. The question is whether this was the cause of the whistling noise I have been trying to diagnose for a while. It normally sounds worse when driving so I will report back on that the next time I get out for a drive.

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