Where did you buy your (good) alternator?

[deckeda]

Looks like I may need to replace my OEM one soon. The charging light just came on while driving to work. Car drove fine and everything electrical still was OK, but I'll test the alternator ASAP of course. Little nervous just now because I'm 40 miles away here at work, but whatever.

But anyway, Majestic is out of my league: about $200 for the genuine article. It's just that I don't want to get one at an auto parts store and have it be defective in like a month (or ever, really --- this one went 247,xxx miles ...) , so share any good success stories you have. I have Auto Zone, Pep Boys, NAPA, O'Reilly, Advance Auto, that kind of thing near me. Thanks.

[bruno8747]

I had my autzone one for about 8 months now and I had a sound system on it and it still works fine. It was remanufactured btw.

[TypeG]

i got mine from the honda dealership. it was $280. i had bought one from pepboys in a pinch for $120, the bad part about this was i gave them my OEM core, which honda only accepts OEM cores. it only lasted six months before going out and came w/ lifetime warranty, lol. i put the honda part on six years ago with no further problems.

if you are driving and it begins to stall, turn of your headlights and/or any other electrical source. i was driving at night when mine was going out and it began bogging down to stall, i turned off my headlights and it came back to life and got me home, but i had to drive in the dark. later.

[deckeda]

... the bad part about this was i gave them my OEM core, which honda only accepts OEM cores.

Ouch.

it only lasted six months before going out and came w/ lifetime warranty, lol. i put the honda part on six years ago with no further problems.

That is precisely what I mean. I know most of the auto parts stores' units come with a lifetime warranty, but if it means a "lifetime" of swapping it out all the time ... fuck that --- that's not why I drive a Honda. Especially if the POS still costs $100 or more.

[Shehzada]

The genuine Honda one's are also remans but they are worth it since I installed one in my 89 LX-i a few years ago with no problems. If you had to go with aftermarket.........then go with A1 Cardone .

[phatdoughnut]

I just bought some new brushes for it and installed them. You do need a pretty heavy duty soldering gun tho, i had to borrow my dads.

Brushes were only like 8 bucks?

[deckeda]

Right, but what was your symptom? Just noise/squealing or did the bad brushes wear down so much as to cause it not to output? I'm supposing the test didn't show a bad rectifier, etc.

[TypeG]

i was talking to a guy that rebuilds them and he said a lot of times the sodier joint breaks at the harness/connector. i would assume that it would stop working instantly if that happened. later.

[deckeda]

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to take a look at that ...

[ceelooboob]

ive had an auto zone one for like a year and no problems yet

[phatdoughnut]

i was talking to a guy that rebuilds them and he said a lot of times the sodier joint breaks at the harness/connector. i would assume that it would stop working instantly if that happened. later.

Well The problem wasnt the soder on mine, the brushes wear down after time and they need to be replaced, they are kinda like brakes i guess you could say. Go to a parts store and see if they stock the alternator brushes.

My sysmptoms were just low low voltage and then eventually died(no voltage)

[mrvinyl33]

Yeah I noted Majestic is charging $200 for OEM remanufactured units. From what I've heard, I'd stick with OEM. Maybe even try a pull out from another member selling one...esp if coming off a CB7 with under 200k miles. But obviously that's not remanufactured.

[deckeda]

Everything's on hold until I get a chance to look at it in a few days. It started up just fine and I made it home just fine. I didn't really notice the lights getting dim, but who knows. (And I won't be driving it to work again until fixed ...)

At first the light didn't come on and then after about 5-10 minutes it was on.

So, the pattern was just like when I went to work, only it came on sooner on the way home. Hmm ...

I'd read in one of the threads here that the system expects the alternator to charge at certain rate or charge up the battery in a certain amount of time, and if that doesn't happen, the light goes on. If I understood that correctly that might explain why the light just didn't come on immediately upon startup?

I'd love it to just be brushes, assuming it's a low-voltage situation; not sure how to test for that without disassembling it and taking a peek at them unfortunately. Meantime I'll go back and re-read the batt/alt. Sticky here.

[Maple50175]

why not buy mine? work's great 40 shipped.

[PakaloloHonda]

I bought mine from JarHead .. (Felipe) who knows .. he might have another one ..?

A Hui Hou !!!
Tomi