Ok first of all, this process has become extremely time consuming, so if anyone is planning to do this, plan on about 2-3 days.

The biggest problem I have right now is the alternator wiring. My old alternator had a 2-blade plug with a black and red wire on it, and it had a thick red wire to the stud on the back of the case.
The new alternator has a completely different plug, which has 3 wires in it. On this one, there is a black, a red, and a tan. Now my car had a tan wire coming from the alternator which went into a harness that goes into the firewall, but instead of plugging into the alternator, it was spliced with the thick red wire which goes on the stud. According to my book, this is for the volt gauge(tan wire), which is what I assumed anyways. Heres what I did. I cut a plug off a junk yard car, so I would have the correct plug for the new serpentine alternator. Then I simply extended the thick red wire which goes to the stud on the back of the case. Then I simply extended the red and black wires which plug into the alternator. Then I 'unspliced' the tan wire from the thick red one, and extended and connected it to the tan wire on the alternator plug.

I am pretty sure I did this correct, but I am afraid to start the car until I'm more sure. Could anyone please verify if I have done this right?

 

couldn't you of just swapped pulleys on the alternetors?

 

I don't think the cases are the same either. I'm not sure but I think that's the problem I ran into on mine. The serp alt doesn't adjust tension, so it's different.

 

I did the same swap.



Thick red wire goes to the post on the back of the alt.

The other two wires I spliced together and ran to the wire in my harness (the "one wire" from the original alt).

Works fine.

 

Yea, I got brave and started the car today, and it appears to be charging fine. When I get done with all of this, I will write a tech article on the whole process.

No, you can't just change pulleys on the alternator. Thats what I thought I could do, also, but on a V-Belt alternator, the mounting holes are directly opposite each other, and on the serpentine one, they are not.