Sunday, August 03, 2008

Broken alternator bracket

I haven't updated in ages and I have a huge backlog (I assume I can fiddle with the dates and post in reverse order? I'll find out ...)

But to the present: Dame Zara made it back from a 450-mile round trip to The Grampians in western Victoria last weekend without incident, but by the time we got into the outskirts of Melbourne and it was dark and rainy, one couldn't help but notice that her fanbelt was squealing like a stuck pig every time we had to stop and pull away from traffic lights. In the past this has just been due to a loose alternator belt, so this afternoon I set to to tighten up the belt.

However, the alternator was at the top of its travel and the belt was still rather loose, and I'd noticed before last week that the whole alternator seemed to be moving back and forth more than it should, so I slackened off the alternator altogether and found that indeed there was lots of movement of the alternator on its bracket. 'No worries,' I thought, 'I'll just have to tighten up the bolts that hold the alternator bracket onto the front of the engine.' No such luck .... I soon found that the bracket itself is comprehensively broken (as you can see by the pix below).

It could *possibly* be welded up, but I'm not confident it would stay together for very long.

So I'm hoping that someone out there might have a spare alternator bracket hanging around in their shed (I'm not even sure if the V8-250 one is the same as the earlier 2.5-litre, as the earlier cars had a generator), or have an inkling where I might find one. Even if I do find a spare, the fun isn't yet over: as I have a Bosch alternator not the original Lucas, the bracket needs to be modified to suit (as you can see by the welds on the old one), so I'll need to find someone prepared to do the required welding.

Even more fun: two of the four studs that hold it on to the front of the engine are broken -- and I suspect previous owner/s haven't been bothered to fix them as it seems I'll have to take off the whole fan/water pump assembly to get to them and to re-fit the bracket. Oh the joys!


But on the upside, I did get the chance to clean up the front of the engine that's usually obscured by the alternator ...

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