Hello fellow 'Bird lovers. I have what I think is a simple question. I am replacing an old single wire faulty alternator that was installed by previous owner. Do I need to remove the pulley that is sitting in front of the lower alternator bolt to remove the bolt all the way or is there a trick to doing this without having to remove the pulley? Also, are there any other issues I need to be aware of with replacening a 65Amp alternator with a high powered 150Amp alternator?
assuming that you have a stock setup and assuming by pulley below you are referring to the power steering pump pulley you just need to loosen the adjustment bolts for the belt tension and slide it out of the way, very basic and easy to do. Here is the service manual courtesy of Harold B. https://www.firebird400ho.com/mdocuments-libra As far as your question about more than doubling the alternator output you need to make sure the wiring is sized accordingly even if you will not be using most of it with your current ad on electrical accessories, because someone else in the future might and burn the car down because of undersized wiring.
Barnbird. Thanks for the response and you are correct, stock setup and referreing to the power steering pulley. Great feedback on the wiring being sized appropriately. Thanks again!
Well gents, still having an issue. It appears that I do have to remove the power steering pulley according to the diagram in the service manual. The bolt that will not clear the pulley is the lower bold on the alternator (circled in red in pic). I am fairly new at working on my V8 'bird so this may be a softball question but is the belt tensioner for the power steering pulley the one circled in blue on the pic? If so, which of the three bolts must be removed to swing the pulley out of the way? The top two?
No problem it is normal to have to swing the pump and pulley out of the way to fully remove that alternator bolt. As far as which bolts to loosen on v belt setups you will be looking for one bolt that goes through the slotted adjuster side and another pivot bolt almost opposite of that. If you look closely in the diagram, you will see that the bracket with the slot in it is solidly mounted to the pump with bolts and swings with it when making the adjustment. That leaves 2 other bolts, the one at the slotted adjustment and the other which goes straight through the bracket to the motor. loosen these two and move the pump out of the way. If I remember correctly, you first loosen the belt and remove from pulley and that gives you enough swing on the pump to get it out of the way. Almost forgot, there is also a slotted bracket adjustment nut on the back of the pump which also needs to be loosened.
