I would like to have a 100 amp alternator to power my stereo system and various other upgrades. What will fit in the factory bracket?
summit sells a number of 100 amp alternators that say they will fit 66- 86 fords. one says it fits 65-77 comets. part # sum-810302, $129.95 it's chrome and is a 1 wire. i think thats the one i use on my maverick. may have to use a few shims to keep it straight but thats pretty easy.
I have tried a couple different 100 amp chrome alternators with no luck. The difference may be that I used the same hook-up type and did not move to the one wire but mine were terrible. They do not perform at all at idle, they are remanufatured units full of foreign parts, I have had 2 different ones apart, and one I had totally grenaded scattering its internals everywhere while driving to a carshow. Even the bearings said made in China. I have replaced the external volatge reg too and this still did not help anything I wound up buying a 61 amp unit from the local parts store that actually has a warrenty and swapped its internals into one of the chrome cases I had left from the bad ones. I can now sit at a stop light with the headlights, heater blower, radio and AMP, and my signal lights actually will cycle instead of coming to a slow halt. This might have been due to the fact I did not have the one wire set-up but after 3 years of fighting and 2 different brands I gave up and just got a quality remanufatured one from the local parts place. The chrome cases were great but that alone did not get me down the road. If I have an alternator problem I will switch cases and try to explain to the parts guy oh the case looks so good cause its in a show car which is true they just don't need to know I swapped cases
I found the one from Jegs. I will porbably go with that. Are there any tricks to making the 1 wire setup work. I have seen a 1 wire conversion kit in the catalog. Do I need to get that.
The only thing about a 1 wire setup is that your "ALT" light will no longer work. What I did was to use mine as a "3 wire" instead. I have a Powermaster alternator and it is basically a Delco SI alternator in a chrome case. There was a plug on the side near where the one wire connects that I removed to reveal two spade type terminals...on Delcos these are labelled #1 and #2, but Powermaster did not label them. This site has good photos of a Delco alternator to identfy which wire is which:http://mightymo.org/Proj_OneWire.html Terminal #2 goes to +12v and terminal #1 goes to the wire that goes back to the ALT light. A little more complicated, but now my idiot light works again
The idiot light should not be a problem for me. The cluster is being replaced with a tach and I will monitor my charging with a voltmeter. Thanks for the help guys. I'll be getting the 1 wire alt pretty soon. Stay tuned for the next topic.
