Comments would be appreciated.

JamesC

 

My uncle says dont buy new or reman just get the stock part rebuilt, so you know it will fit right i guess. I bought a reman tho and it fit and works great took like 5 mins to do.

 

Remanufactured are as good as the parts and the people doing the work. The one thing I don't like is they use parts from other defective alternators. You get what you pay for even if they say lifetime warranty. It will still strand you on the side of the road.

 

i got a reman once.. didn't leave me on the side of the road .. but i caught it before it went completely bad.. bearings went out. went to the place i bought it at and had it replaced free of charge. i didn' t think napa liked me changeing my altenator in the parking lot but oh well..
the reman i got been running strong for 2 years now.

 

I believe it depends on which brand of Reman Alternator you buy. I will never buy anything from Pep Boys, I went through 2 in one week. Checker, Shucks, Kragen has pretty good ones if you get the Autolite, stay away from their Sure Start/OE quality brand. When I worked for them I warrantied only 2 or three Autolites, and tons of the cheapo ones. Autozone the duralast, and duralast gold are good too, the 1 year warranty ones are junk. The alternators on these cars aren't exactly high tech, pretty easy to test and rebuild. The cheapo ones use junk bearings, and usually only replace what is broken. Thats my take.

 

I've found that getting a good rebuild from ANY parts store is a 50/50 proposition.

I would find a local rebuilder and either have yours rebuilt or buy a unit from them.

 

For some time, I have been contemplating doing a rebuild on my alternator, as it is 25+ years in age, and will eventually blow.
The problem is that most of the available parts are from china [you will notice that I will not even use a capital 'c' in its spelling. If I cannot source good parts, it is doubtful that a rebuilder will even try. When I rebuilt the Lucas alternator on the Triumph, I used German parts that lasted 20 years for me and are still working for the guy that bought it eight years ago.
So, I will add another Q to this post. "Where do I get non-china, non-india parts?"
Just about everything sold is junk. Everything. Even G.M. sells parts from both china and from USA, where the only discernable difference is one digit on the serial #. The water pumps are a good example.

Seth