I got a new alternator a couple weeks ago and for some reason I have this sneeking suspicion that it's FUBAR'D. When the car is dead cold, I start it up and seriously after like 2 minutes of it idling that thing is hot as hell, I mean it feels abnormally hot. I turn the car off and the crankshaft isn't even hot to touch yet, but the alternator is way hot. I could SWEAR that they weren't supposed to get this hot. I mean I know they get a little hot but this just doesn't feel right. Can anyone confirm that it should be getting this hot? The alternator is like less than a month old, I took it into autozone and they said it's putting out good ampreage etc, but I still think that something just doesn't seem right. Battery and cables are all new so it's nothing like that.

Also it seems like that in the morning the car starts up just perfect, like you can tell that the starter is getting full strength, but after driving around for awhile, I turn the car off get gas or go into a store, come out go to start the car and it like sounds like it's begging for some juice. Very odd Im not sure exactly what the heck is going on.

Any ideas?

 

Got a big thumping amp? That's it if you do. If not check the battery. If that's ok, take one of the battery cables off when the engine is shut down and measure the current draw. Should be less than .2 Amps. If not, you have something consuming too much power when it should not be.

 

How in the world are you touching the crankshaft?

 

sound like the voltage regulator has gone south and it is over charging. Take a voltage meter and mearsure voltage at the battery with the engine at idle. Anything over 15 volt is way to high and needs to be replaced. You should have voltage reading of about 13 to 14.5 is about normal. If it is reading higher, this would cause the alt to get really hot...

 

Whoops sorry I meant the crankshaft damper!

I will try the other things mentioned.

BTW No amp.

 

One other thing. I recently made my own custom guage cluster for the dash so I now have all the stock guages removed. Well one of the problems that I came upon is that the alternator wasn't powering up when I started the car because it wasn't getting a signal to come on anymore. I now just have a switched 12V wire going into the single wire that goes into the alternator. Does anyone know if that wire does anything else special that it might not be doing now because I have it bypassed because of the cluster? That's all that the wire normal does is send 12V to the alternator when the car is on so it can power up the coils right?

 

Should only be the energizing wire for the alt. If nothing else seems wrong, don't mess with it