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The fix for my endless alternator failure's

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Old 07-16-2018, 03:54 PM
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Originally Posted by 5.7stroker
I didn't think it mattered. I honestly didn't even bother to measure it compared to my stock one. Just put it on and was happy that the install went smooth. Thanks again for doing all the research on this. There's tons of parts out there for our cars but only a fraction of the total are actually worth a damn.
I hear that.

And no problem, it was out of necessity for me, I kept getting left on the side of the road or barely making it home and having to tow the car over and over and I wasn't willing to risk possibly burning up a brand new dealership $400 alternator and having to eat it if it went bad and I needed to somehow test an OEM alternator to see if my issue was **** parts, so I came up with the junkyard thing...

There's a good chance your pulley was the same size so I wouldn't sweat it too much, if you're worried about it pull the pulley off the LS1 alt and stick it in there and compare. (be hard to put the whole alternator in there and compare but you probably could.
Old 11-10-2018, 07:25 PM
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Did this install today and it fixed all my problems. Thanks for thinking of this!
Old 11-10-2018, 07:36 PM
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Good to hear! I guess Pooter DOES know his ****... lol
Old 11-11-2018, 01:32 AM
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this has been a SJ production
Old 11-12-2018, 05:30 PM
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Originally Posted by CoreyD
Did this install today and it fixed all my problems. Thanks for thinking of this!
Glad it worked out for you man and happy to help. I wish there had been a thread about this when I went through approx 10 alternators in under a year.

Originally Posted by G Atsma
Good to hear! I guess Pooter DOES know his ****... lol
I know a thing or maybe two lol

Originally Posted by sjsingle1
this has been a SJ production
Yep, you were the one that gave me the idea to look into the large case alternators.
Old 11-12-2018, 10:57 PM
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and I got my AD244 right after you did !

got you to be the guinea pig
Old 11-19-2018, 03:49 PM
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I looked up 3351092 at rock auto and if you click on info, it says that it is not 1 wire capable. Is this an error? I thought I should be able to run a wire with a resistor to a keyed +12V source.

the alternator in my 69 Camaro with ls3 accessories and it has a 2 wire from a 2010+camaro. I'm running dominator EFI. is there a way to make it work? It defaults to about 13.3 without anything connected.
Old 11-19-2018, 05:52 PM
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Originally Posted by TXsilverado
I looked up 3351092 at rock auto and if you click on info, it says that it is not 1 wire capable. Is this an error? I thought I should be able to run a wire with a resistor to a keyed +12V source.

the alternator in my 69 Camaro with ls3 accessories and it has a 2 wire from a 2010+camaro. I'm running dominator EFI. is there a way to make it work? It defaults to about 13.3 without anything connected.

I don't know alternators by part number I know them better by application. If it's a 4 pin it's 1 wire controlled. The L terminal. If it's a 2 pin it's 2 wire controlled but can be converted to 1 wire. It's been done but I haven't done it. I'm not familiar with dominator efi and the charging circuit control that it uses so I don't know, my assumption would be the dominator doesn't control the alternator therefore it wouldn't matter.
Old 11-20-2018, 05:15 PM
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i bought the regulator to convert a 2 pin dr44g to a 4 pin, then found out the alternator from a 10' camaro is not the dr44g and is a "Valeo unit". anyone know about changing the regulator on a 2010 + camaro to be a 4 pin, 1 wire operation?
Old 11-20-2018, 05:54 PM
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Originally Posted by TXsilverado
i bought the regulator to convert a 2 pin dr44g to a 4 pin, then found out the alternator from a 10' camaro is not the dr44g and is a "Valeo unit". anyone know about changing the regulator on a 2010 + camaro to be a 4 pin, 1 wire operation?
How many pins are on the alternator you have

If it's a 4 pin there is a terminal in it labeled L, that's the exciter pin and the only one that is wired from the car in OEM applications. It receives I believe a 5 volt signal that's why you need a resistor if you tap that wire on an older car where the charge indicator light feeds the alternator.

On a 2 pin there is an L terminal for the exciter and a computer feedback/communication terminal. I haven't had to modify one yet to work so I haven't explored what it takes to make a 2 pin work on your application
Old 11-20-2018, 10:37 PM
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Its a 2 pin but from what i read, it works from a pwm signal like a 2 pin dr44g.
Old 11-21-2018, 12:07 PM
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To add to the gray area...this thread has good evidence to say that we should be hooking up both the S and L terminals on these alts.

https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversio...ing-again.html
Old 11-21-2018, 05:13 PM
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Originally Posted by TXsilverado
To add to the gray area...this thread has good evidence to say that we should be hooking up both the S and L terminals on these alts.

https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversio...ing-again.html

This thread is now 1033 posts long. 1026 of those posts are about the GM 4 pin 145 amp alternator.

The 4 pin alternators, all of them, only have the L terminal wired from the factory.

2 pins were PWM controlled by the PCM and required an amp sensor wired to the PCM and looped around the battery cable.

You really should start a new thread if you want good info on a 2 wire into an older vehicle with an aftermarket ECU, it's completely out of the realm of what is discussed in this thread and will just cause confusion.

But.. From what I understand the 2 wire alternator, if you run no wires to it (control wires) will charge 13.3-13.8 volts, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

There are write ups on home made PWM modules to pulse width modulate (ramp up/down) the duty cycle of the alternator if that's what you're looking to do. Or you can run the PCM from an 08 or so vehicle or newer to control the alternator.

I haven't had to cross the bridge of putting a 2 wire into a 1 wire setup so I'm not sure what it takes to do it without a little more research.
Old 12-15-2018, 10:46 PM
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I'm still running my 92 amp alternator from my 180k mile Silverado with no issues. My Silverado has zero issues with parts store alternator for two years now

My Camaro however can not use parts store alternator

Also the alternator wire and ground wire upgrade are very easy to do when you do the alternator swap.

So save money, get an eBay truck alternator and some good 2-4 gauge wire to run new power and ground to the battery and alternator and ground the case of the alternator to chassis
Old 12-16-2018, 06:27 AM
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Originally Posted by 00pooterSS
This thread is now 1033 posts long. 1026 of those posts are about the GM 4 pin 145 amp alternator.

The 4 pin alternators, all of them, only have the L terminal wired from the factory.

2 pins were PWM controlled by the PCM and required an amp sensor wired to the PCM and looped around the battery cable.

You really should start a new thread if you want good info on a 2 wire into an older vehicle with an aftermarket ECU, it's completely out of the realm of what is discussed in this thread and will just cause confusion.

But.. From what I understand the 2 wire alternator, if you run no wires to it (control wires) will charge 13.3-13.8 volts, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

There are write ups on home made PWM modules to pulse width modulate (ramp up/down) the duty cycle of the alternator if that's what you're looking to do. Or you can run the PCM from an 08 or so vehicle or newer to control the alternator.

I haven't had to cross the bridge of putting a 2 wire into a 1 wire setup so I'm not sure what it takes to do it without a little more research.
I now understand why you got ride of the SS for a truck, to tow the VIP right.

keep up the good work you do here.

Last edited by badmfkr; 12-16-2018 at 06:35 AM.
Old 12-17-2018, 12:18 PM
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Originally Posted by chrysler kid
I'm still running my 92 amp alternator from my 180k mile Silverado with no issues. My Silverado has zero issues with parts store alternator for two years now

My Camaro however can not use parts store alternator

Also the alternator wire and ground wire upgrade are very easy to do when you do the alternator swap.

So save money, get an eBay truck alternator and some good 2-4 gauge wire to run new power and ground to the battery and alternator and ground the case of the alternator to chassis
Yeah it's odd that even the small case truck alternators have no issues but ALL of the off the shelf F body alternators fail the day or the week you put them in. There is some common part in the F body alternators that all the parts store alternators are sharing. I think it's likely the diodes or the voltage regulator but I never bothered trying to figure it out because I was worried if I got a replacement regulator or diodes they may be the same ones that kept failing so I needed a different fix for the issue.

Originally Posted by badmfkr
I now understand why you got ride of the SS for a truck, to tow the VIP right.

keep up the good work you do here.
Yeah man, my original reason for getting rid of the SS was to get a boat and because I had just gotten a dirtbike also that I was rebuilding and needed something to carry it around with. I miss the SS bad, I put a ton of work into that car over the 5 years I had it and it was really well built. And even though it was a stock cam full weight car it ran 7.6's in the 1/8th and drug a bunch of crappy built giant cam and giant stall cars, it used to **** people off so bad.

It was the funnest daily driver ever, had a 3800 rpm stall and 315/35R17 drag radials on it daily. The last year I owned it it had 28" slicks on it that never came off (needed those for hard digs on the street), I drove it to work here and there like that too lol. I left it stock cam because I drove it about 1k miles a week every week and I got a little worried about valve spring wear on a car that went 4-5k miles a month and was always driving long distances.

I had the chance to buy it back and the car was on it's way back from Idaho, he was supposed to contact me in January or February 2015 and I never heard from him, this guy had no business owning that car he couldn't handle the big stall or the power, when I finally got ahold of him he said the car got away from him and he totaled it. He sent be pics he smacked a wall hard in the front and rear of the car, it was destroyed. The guy I sold it to babied it and took extreme care of it, then he sold it to one of his doofus *** friends.

Sadly the car had gotten a new 5K dollar paint job two years before that, with new OEM GM headlights signal lenses and all, it literally looked brand new until doofus got ahold of it.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment man and here's an idle video of the boat to make all the above feel better lol




Old 02-21-2019, 12:18 PM
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Has anyone tried using a 4 pin DR44 or DR44G alternator? Every time a DR44 or DR44G has been mentioned in this thread it has referred to the 2 pin variant but there were some vehicles from 2006-2016 (namely the 2010-2016 2500 Express Vans) that came with a DR44 or DR44G with a 4 pin connector on the regulator. I haven't been able to find a wiring diagram for these vehicles online to figure out if they will fully charge with one wire like the 4 pin AD244 or if they are still pwm controlled by the ecu/pcm like the 2 pin 2 wire variants. If these would work it would open up another another avenue for 145a alternator upgrades.

If nobody can come up with anything I may purchase one to try. I already have an AD244 145a on my WS6 but I now I have a 2004 Sierra as well that needs an upgrade and low mileage AD244 are starting to carry a premium.
Old 02-21-2019, 01:53 PM
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Originally Posted by RebelExtrm02
Has anyone tried using a 4 pin DR44 or DR44G alternator? Every time a DR44 or DR44G has been mentioned in this thread it has referred to the 2 pin variant but there were some vehicles from 2006-2016 (namely the 2010-2016 2500 Express Vans) that came with a DR44 or DR44G with a 4 pin connector on the regulator. I haven't been able to find a wiring diagram for these vehicles online to figure out if they will fully charge with one wire like the 4 pin AD244 or if they are still pwm controlled by the ecu/pcm like the 2 pin 2 wire variants. If these would work it would open up another another avenue for 145a alternator upgrades.

If nobody can come up with anything I may purchase one to try. I already have an AD244 145a on my WS6 but I now I have a 2004 Sierra as well that needs an upgrade and low mileage AD244 are starting to carry a premium.
I haven't. Give me a vehicle it comes on and I'll look up the wiring diagram.

All we need to know though is if it's 1 wire controlled. ALL 4 wire alternators I've seen so far are 1 wire controlled.

If you can get your eyes on one of those vehicles that would be even better.
Old 02-21-2019, 02:46 PM
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Just a couple thoughts..

Any time after 7 years,, the OEM is no longer obligated to provide "new" parts, in the name of profit,
depending on the layers of bean counting, they all eventually go to 3rd party manufacturers or rebuilders.
I seriously doubt that AC/Delco is actually building any new alternators for an application thats
10 years + old unless they are still using the same part.
With NAFTA loopholes they can build them in almost any country and say they are American made if
they want to play the ship through Mexico or Canada game.

Valeo in France for instance actually makes a lot of alternators for the various marques with their individual branding..
Especially for the World Market cars like the Focus or the Malibu.

I've always just rebuilt my alternators myself, you can buy the bearings and all the internal parts from
most bigger electrical rebuild shops. Often being able to buy a heavier duty bits like the upgraded diodes and
ceramic bearings, brushes etc. It ain't rocket science.. If you've pulled a motor this is a cakewalk.

The big deal about an original manufacture GM alternator is that it was designed to last at least as long as the
powertrain warranty,, vs a unit from a 3rd party that may have a 1 year or 30K warranty. It's ALWAYS about profit.
Quality is far down the list.. So my expectation is that if I know the mileage of the used car, I can assume that part is likely
good to 75 or 100K miles (Baseline) so if the wrecked car has 40K its < half its life used, and trucks typically don't have their
median shift point near as high as a car, as well as the heavier 140A alternator is intended to allow you to charge
batteries in trailers as well as the vehicles systems load, so in normal day to day use its much lower taxed so runs cooler than the
smaller unit. Plus the truck engine compartment is usually bigger and much cooler than a car.

YMMV, Live Free or Die!

Old 02-21-2019, 04:51 PM
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Originally Posted by 00pooterSS
I haven't. Give me a vehicle it comes on and I'll look up the wiring diagram.

All we need to know though is if it's 1 wire controlled. ALL 4 wire alternators I've seen so far are 1 wire controlled.

If you can get your eyes on one of those vehicles that would be even better.
I know for sure a 2014 Chevrolet Express 2500 w/ 6.0 motor came with the 4 pin 145a DR44 alternator as an option. You can even look that year and model up on Rockauto or GMPartsGiant and see the 145a alternators listed as 4 pin or 4 wire with pictures of DR44 cases with 4 pin plug regulators on the back.

Ive also noticed the pins on most 4 pin regulators sold for the DR44 and DR44G, such as in rebuild kits, are listed as P-L-S-F which I believe is the same on the CS and AD series 4 pin alternators.

I haven’t yet laid eyes on one still installed to see how many wires they use on the connector.

Last edited by RebelExtrm02; 02-21-2019 at 05:03 PM.


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