Fj45 Pickup Standard Alternator
I replaced my alternator tonight - it was really easy - a two banana job. I was surprised at how easy it was to do.
I read the FSM before hand and it had a bunch of extra steps that were not necessary. The FSM tells you to drain the coolant and move the hose going into the bottom of the radiator - I found this not necessary. It also suggests to remove the pulley from the power steering pump - also not necessary.So here were my steps. First - remove the battery cables. You don't want to shock the crap out of your self or weld your wrench to the side of the engine block. Remove skid plates.
Toyota Fj45 Truck
Take 14 mm wrench and place on pulley tensioner - pull towards passenger side to remove tension on the serpentine belt - slip the belt off. Remove two 14 mm bolts on top and bottom of alternator - top is a nut - bottom is a bolt.
Remove two clips on side of alternator - they are simply holding the electrical line in place and out of the way of the serpentine belt. Pinch the back of the clips and push them out of the alternator clip. This should allow you to wiggle the alternator forward and off the mounting bolt on top. Carefully push the coolant lines out of the way to gain access to the two connectors on the back. Carefully remove the grey plastic cover over a 10mm bolt.
Take a small pocket screwdriver and twist the cap loose then it slides off - exposing the 10mm bolt. Remove bolt and cable attached underneath bolt.
1999 Land Cruiser Alternator
This should now allow you to turn the alternator around to access the plug on the back side or cabin side of the alternator. It has a tab on the top side - press the tab in and wiggle the connector side to side - carefully backing the cable out of the alternator. This took a while for me to do - it was full of dirt around the edges and took some patience to work it out without damaging the cables. Once free - carefully work the alternator down and out the bottom of the engine bay. Repeat steps backwards to get it back in.There was a lot more room to work under there than the FSM states.
I had plenty of wiggle room to remove it. Entire job took 1 hour. Now I have bright lights on my dash, no more failing bearings and volts are back up to 14 - it was running approximately 13 and you could hear and feel the bearings failing. Mine was too - it was difficult to remove. I turned the alternator so the plug was facing the ground and used a small screw driver to work the plug loose. Prying on the sides of the plug -VERY- slowly and carefully till it started walking out. It took some patience - but I got it to come out in 1 piece.You are right - it is low to the ground and gets lots of contanmination in the pug.
Mine was filled with fine silt, I cleaned it up before re-installing and it snapped right in. Patience and a very small screwdriver were the key to my removal. Mine was too - it was difficult to remove. I turned the alternator so the plug was facing the ground and used a small screw driver to work the plug loose.
Prying on the sides of the plug -VERY- slowly and carefully till it started walking out. It took some patience - but I got it to come out in 1 piece.You are right - it is low to the ground and gets lots of contanmination in the pug.
Mine was filled with fine silt, I cleaned it up before re-installing and it snapped right in. Patience and a very small screwdriver were the key to my removal. I am going to be adding a MobiArc welder and the Sequoia alternator uses avalanche type diodes in the rectifier plate which are not compatible with any welder utilizing the alternator for its power supply. So I am stepping up to the 100A 100-Series alternator from the 80A that came with mine.However I did research the viability of using the Sequoia 130 or 150A alternator and determined to do the swap you'd need to change from the oval style 100-Series alt connector (not sure if the later year 100 Series use this same connector or not) to the more square shaped plug found on the Sequoia. This isn't a direct bolt on upgrade.and it looks like you'd need to cut the extra mounting tab off the Sequoia alternator to get it to fit.Onur shipped me the connector and that was as far as I got since I've since learned it isn't welder compatible anyway.The LC alternator is on the left and the Sequoia alternator is on the right. I installed a new reman'd alternator today.
I wanted to add a few things.1. I had to remove the PS pump pulley to remove the alternator as it would not clear the pulley.2. The the old side bolt holding the wire harnesses, to the side of the alternator, was way to big for the new alternator. I had to leave them hanging as they were not in the way.Took me 2.5 hours.The alternator that came off was the original. I am at 180k miles. The truck died on the way home from the mountains on Sunday and the bearings were making a ton of noise.
I added a new battery and drove it home and around 3 days until replacing it. My alternator died Monday night as I was pulling into my neighborhood (well, it probably died slowly before that, but that's when the battery put up the white flag.) Battery was new in May, so I had it tested Tuesday AM - good. Ordered reman'd 100 Amp alternator yesterday, and walked in the door an hour ago with the new unit from the Toyota Dealership. Spent an hour at lunch starting the removal and came to the same conclusion you did, the PS pulley was going to have to go. Mine appears to be original and I'm at 177K-ish. Bolts were on there tight. Was removing the pulley easier than swinging the entire PS pump out of the was as described in another thread (the mean green alt thread)?
I know I'm the slowest mechanic on earth, so I had no illusions about the 1 hour time frame. My huge monkey arms don't fit up in there real well either. Did you have to remove any coolant hoses, or was there sufficient room to slide it forward and out under the radiator?
There are a couple of things. First thing is that if the voltage is not up in the 14v+ range, then the alternator is not charging. Does the battery voltage change when the truck is running versus when it is off? If so, that is probably a good indication that it is hooked up properly. You can also check the voltage coming out of the alternator. Not sure which wire it is, but one of them should be an electrical output.
See if it is the same as at the battery. Check the alternator wires and follow them. Just make sure it isn't something dumb like a burned wire.If the voltage is up around 14v+ that still doesn't mean that the alternator is working. It could be producing volts, but not amps. I have seen this happen several times. The easiest way to test this is to use an induction type amp meter.
They can be bought at Home Depot pretty cheap. Some multimeters can do it. They just put a clamp around a battery cable.Auto stores are notorious for not finding bad alternators. The rebuilding operations that do alternators for the auto parts store even send out lots of bad alternators. Our shop always sent ours out to a rebuilding shop. See if any are in the area and have them test it.Your alternator may have an intermittent problem also and the problem won't show up all the time.Make sure to get the problem taken care of though because if any one of the trinity (alternator, battery, starter) is not working right, it can quickly take out the others.