How do you protect your Alternator

[dazza85]

How do you protect your alternator from water mud and all the other crud that fills them up and fritz's them.

Mine got crud in it that cause one brush to stick and the resulting arcing damaged the regulator which fried a couple of diodes
This all adds up to $320:00 damage

What I want to do is avoid a repeat ...

One of the challenges is that on the Isuzu the alternator is mounted low on the block and I have not yet found a way to mount it higher.

What do you do ??

[mud_slinger]

i jus cross my fingers and wen i see that volt gague drop down to 12 i give it lots of revs, sometimes i squirt water over it and tht can help. i'm doin well wit the mu, only had to do brushes once last year

[DaveM]

On my old Bighorn, I had a hole drilled in the alt. and a window squirter hooked to it to keep mud out of the brushes, seemed to work ok, never had another problem after doing this.

[DieselBoy]

I have seen a disk machined up to fit between the pully and the fan, the same diameter as the alternator body, seems to stop some of the dirt and water ingress. Planning to do that to my new Alt.

[dazza85]

On my old Bighorn, I had a hole drilled in the alt. and a window squirter hooked to it to keep mud out of the brushes, seemed to work ok, never had another problem after doing this.

I had wondered about sealing it up and pressurizing it with compressed air but the flow that would be required to keep it cool makes it not an option.
But the idea of a jet to clean the brushes is worth looking at ...

May-be water with the moter not running and then air to dry it out

Where did you put the hole ??

I have seen a disk machined up to fit between the pully and the fan, the same diameter as the alternator body, seems to stop some of the dirt and water ingress. Planning to do that to my new Alt.

I can see how that would help as the fan on the back of the pulley would push all the crud in there.
Any idea how it would affect the cooling

[darinz]

I have 2 alternators on my truck. One has the brushes in a sealed unit so they are unaffected by mud etc. eg after Rotorua aand being submerged in the liquid mud in the holes I pulled it apart and there was no mud or signs of water around the brushes. The rest of it was coated in it.
The other alternator is an old fashion Delco model (but brand new) that has the brushes on a spring loaded level so the mud can't clog those either.

[SMOKEY]

The alternator on my Toyota 3F has never been touched in 10yrs, It has an external mounted on the inner guard voltage regulator, rather than the latter models with the internal integrated voltage regulator. Even though the old points regulator causes a bit of static on the radios I sure as hell ain't going to change it,not with the trouble I have seen other people have with their alternators.

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE,

FITZY.