Alternator Repair

[Retired BLM Rig]

So you're out on the trail at night in pitch black darkness, you've got all your auxiliary lights on (fore, side and aft), you just finished an hour recovering your buddy's Raptor from Satan's bottomless pit, you've been using your ham radio and laptop GPS all day for communication and navigation, your compressor's been running nonstop airing up tires that lost their bead. All of a sudden you notice the subwoofer is fading, the lights are dimming, you look at your dash to discover that your battery light is on and the gauge is falling fast and the zombie apocalypse just crested the ridge!!!

Just then you remember that thread you read on PWR about doing a trail repair on your alternator. You grab your tools and canvas bag with small miscellaneous parts and make a beeline for the engine compartment. Your wife is standing guard with her locked and loaded, night vision equipped AR15 looking for the whites of dangling eyeballs.

You lift the hood of your 2008 3rd. gen PW and get your bearings and remember that disconnecting the negative battery cable is always the best place to start anytime you're working on anything electrical. Then the air intake is the next thing that has to come off.

You loosen the hose clamp and slip the hose off the air filter box.

Then you look for those two pesky 10mm hex bolts that hold the air intake to the throttle body.

As you begin to lift up on the air intake, you remember to unplug the intake air temperature (IAT) sensor that's right in front.

Once all that plastic is out of the way, you can see your goal, the back of the alternator.
You grab your 8mm 1/4" drive socket and assume a seriously compromising position standing on your front bumper leaning over to see the back of the alternator.

You quickly remove the three 8mm nuts that hold the black plastic shield on the back of the alternator, all the while being oh so careful not to drop those nuts into the abyss that is the engine compartment.

Once that's out of the way it reveals the two phillips screws that mount the brush holder in place. So you take even more care in removing these screws by using a magnet with your screwdriver to make sure they don't get lost.

With the brush holder removed you do a quick inspection of the armature slip rings to make sure they're in good shiny smooth shape and not deeply grooved or burned from arcing caused by poor contact.

Then you reach in your canvas bag and pull out your new brush holder assembly that you picked up at Auto Zone for $16.99 + tax.

After you install the new brush holder you remember to pull out that funny "M" shaped clip that retains the brushes until it's in position.

As you begin to reassemble the rest of your alternator and intake, you hear your wife squeeze off a few rounds and you catch the smell of putrefying flesh. You think about that "Retired BLM guy" that wrote the thread on PWR and how he said that 80-90% of alternator failures are due to nothing more than worn out brushes, and that it doesn't matter if you have one or two alternators, sooner or later the brushes will wear out with heavy electrical loads. Then you think about how that "Retired BLM guy" said that he wasn't retired, nor did he work for the BLM, but his truck did. He just thanked God for the privilege to be the second owner of such a fine capable rig!

As you finish tightening up your battery cable, you draw your 45 ACP and begin to ventilate the chest cavities of the closest cadavers and pick up your tools as you make your way to the drivers seat. Your truck roars to life with full power and no warning lights as you engage your lockers and zombie apocalypse switch. You drive straight through the approaching hoard of zombies as your wife squeezes off the last few rounds out the power sliding rear window as you make your way safely to the nearest gas station.




Then you wake up and realize that you really need to stop doing late night posts and falling asleep with your laptop logged on to PWR.

[RustyPW]

Nice write up. But how many beers did you have before writing that?

[Spikethedog]

Good to know, I've started to get CEL's for charging system related codes especially while doing long winch pulls with snow up to the rocker panels, not a good feeling... im gonna call around my local part stores to see if i can track one of those down that might very well fix that issue!

[olyelr]

Love it! Great writeup!

[DamageWagon]

Thanks BLM! Heck I didn't even know you could repair an alternator, I thought they usually burned out. I'm going to get a brush set for the tool kit before our trip now.


Sent from my safe space

[Spikethedog]

So that JX 13 part number is the one you used? When i google it, it always comes up as brush set for early 2000 toyota tundra with a 130 amp alt. I realise that there is a lot of parts that cross reference over a lot of different applications so its making me think if theres upgrades you could do to crank up the output... Theres a good little local shop that rebuilds alternators and starters ill call him see what he suggests.

[Low_Sky]

I think you just invented a whole new genre of service manual there, BLM Rig. If you start doing other repairs you can put them into a "choose your own adventure" format.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Colibri]

Hahaha I agree, very cool write up

[TwinStick]

Love it! Great writeup!

^^^^^What he said ! ^^^^^^^

[Bill2014]

Quality DIY with a touch of humor!

[flattire]

Autozone does show the part ...jx13....but also flashes a red warning .....does not fit your vehicle. 2005 and 2008 years.

[w2dodge]

great stuff

[Retired BLM Rig]

Denso makes alternators for lots of different vehicle manufacturers. The mounting tabs, connectors and clocking may differ, but most of the internals stay the same. My factory service manual (FSM) only shows the procedure for replacing the alternator, however the FSM for my wife's Honda Pilot shows the brush replacement procedure. Both brush sets are identical.

I found the brush set at Auto Zone by looking through their picture catalog, not the application catalog. Brush holder #JX13 and #JX14 look identical, I ordered both to do a comparison, but they told me that they couldn't get the 14 anymore. All I can tell you is, it matches the O.E. exactly and is working perfectly in my truck.

I also bought a set of individual replacement brushes to solder into my O.E. holder so I can still carry a spare.

Brush set #FAX88 $4.99 at Auto Zone.

The bolt just holds the brushes in place until you're done soldering.

New brushes in O.E. holder, just need to trim the excess wire tails.

Cotter pin slipped in the hole for holding the brushes in place until installation.

The finished product.

Rebuilding alternators is a dying art in America, now we just outsource it to Mexico and China, like everything else.



Have a good day gentlemen!

[Retired BLM Rig]

By the way, if your alternator suffers a catastrophic failure, your best bet would be to replace it with a factory Denso remanufactured unit. IMHO, they build and rebuild high quality stuff. You get what you pay for.

[flattire]

I'm sure it fits....you did it! Just wanted to clarify what to expect when searching on their (autozone) website. The counter man will be of no help and even website has incorrect info.

Thanks for great write up....as usual. I didn't even realize these parts would still be available. Used to get brushes for starters and generators MANY years ago....."points" also. I also miss carb rebuild kits....those were the days.