Kirk Kohnen's Alternator Removal Seminar

Most of it worked for me except for the upper alternator bolt. How the
dickens do you get to it? I've been at it half a day. Got everything
out except the upper alternator bolt. And you know, you can't be a
big guy and crawl underneath a Saturn: there's just not enough room,
even though you got 'er jacked up about as high as she'll go and a
jackstand under her. Now I'm digging chat out which is embedded in my
back.


Here are Kohnen's instructions. Betcha I'll have to go to the public
library in the morning:

My 2¢ worth:


It isn't difficult. [Huh? That's easy for YOU to say.]


Procedure was something like this:


1) Write down all of your radio station presets (optional)
2) Disconnect NEGATIVE battery cable (most assuredly NOT optional)
5/16" wrench works well
3) Jack up the right front corner of the car
4) Put a jack stand under the car.
5) Remove the right front wheel
6) Remove the two plastic splash shields (you pull the plastic center
pins out of the fasteners to remove).
7) Use a 14 mm wrench to remove tension from the serpentine belt (turn

wrench clockwise on the bolt in the center of the idler pulley).
8) Move the belt off of a pulley to remove tension from it.
9) Remove the 10 mm bolt holding the splash shield onto the alternator

10) Unsnap the splash shield from the alternator.
11) Unbolt the cable running from the alternator to the starter AT THE

STARTER.
12) Carefully pry the clip up from the other alternator connector and
remove it from the alternator. Be careful not to break the clip off of

the connector.
13) Unbolt the lower alternator bolt.
14) Unbolt the upper alternator bolt.
15) Remove alternator down through the wheel well.

 

typed until their fingers bled, and came up with:

1/4" drive ratchet works pretty well. lots of cursing helps too.

 

These procedures I found here say you have to go at it from above . . .

Alternator Replacement Procedure:

1. Write down all of your radio station presets (optional)
2. Disconnect negative battery cable (most assuredly NOT optional)
5/16" wrench works well
3. Jack up the right front corner of the car
4. Put a jack stand under the car.
5. Remove the right front wheel
6. Remove the two plastic splash shields (you pull the plastic center
pins out of the fasteners to remove).
7. Use a 14 mm wrench to remove tension from the accessory belt (turn
wrench clockwise on the bolt in the center of the idler pulley).
8. Move the belt off of a pulley to remove tension from it.
9. Remove the 10 mm bolt holding the splash shield onto the
alternator
10. Unsnap the splash shield from the alternator.
11. Unbolt the cable running from the alternator to the starter AT THE
STARTER.
12. Carefully pry the clip up from the other alternator connector and
remove it from the alternator. Be careful not to break the clip off of
the connector.
13. Remove the upper alternator bolt (13 mm) from above.
14. Remove the lower alternator bolt (13 mm) from below.
15. Remove alternator down through the wheel well.


You now have the alternator with a 1 ft cable attached. You need to
remove this. The Chilton's manual suggests using a 13 mm wrench that
is only about 60 thousands of an inch thick to hold the stud coming
from the alternator (to prevent it from turning). Such wrenches are
quite difficult to find. I removed the cable from the alternator by
putting two 10 mm nuts on the top of the stud and tightening them
against each other. Then, I used one 10 mm wrench to loosen the nut
holding the cable while using another 10 mm wrench against the bottom
of the two 10 mm nuts that I put at the top.

The bottom line in working without the stud coming out from the
alternator is you don't want to put any torque on it with respect to
the alternator. It is (ahem) not a robust design. When you get this
cable off, put it on the same position on the new alternator and
tighten it similarly (using something to hold the stud into the
alternator to keep it from turning. Either a very thin 13 mm wrench,
or the double nut trick. Then reverse steps 15 to 1 in reverse order.

 

If I remember right, I used a 13 mm wrench like this one:
http://www.parktool.com/products/detail.asp?cat=18&item=DCW-4
Available at any good bicycle shop.

 

Does that 13mm upper alternator bolt have a nut on the other end of it,
like the lower one does? I keep turning it ccw and it's not loosening.

 

. Remove the upper alternator bolt (13 mm) from above.

I got the Haynes manual at the public library. It's not very helpful
and shows a bolt different than the combination torx stud fastening the
steel tube brace which holds the top of the alternator.

Gonna conquer this thing yet, but probably would have come out better
running to the dealer, which here is considered by some of us as a
shakedown operation with its corporate hdq in another state.

Thanks to Kirk, Chuck and others for the honest help.

 

Might as well keep you posted. Sears is nearby but no sockets for
those star-shaped stud ends designed to torment a shadetree mechanic.
So I used a set of long pliers and padded the jaws with duct tape.
Finally the accursed stud came out and the brace fell to the gravel.
Now the alternator wants to move a little but is jammed tight. I
carefully prized it loose from the lower bolt bosses, where it was also
jammed tight, but it doesn't seem to want to come out. All the rest
of Kohnen's instructions I have complied with to the letter. I hate
beating or prizing on an alternator, even with a plastic deadblow or
screwdriver. Back to the torture chamber, which is nothing like
working on an airplane, where thank god there is usually some space,
unless you're shoehorned into a grotesque contortion behind the panel.
<curses and execrations> I think my days bragging on this little car
are over with. It's a little short-lived American Trabant, imho.
Engine purrs, though.

 

Well, OK, I found the upper bolt in its hiding place, which you have to
come at from a quarter view towards the opposite rear of the car and
facing upwards through the wheel well. I'm in a poorly lit spot with
a drop light that keeps eating bulbs, which btw should be from Lowe's,
i. e., those heavy-duty ones with the plastic outer capsule.

Anyways, she's out now and ready to exchange at the Saturn dealer for a
two-hundred dollah reman, plus a serpent belt and some blue loctite.
Strike that comment about the American Trabant. I love that lil ol
DOHC engine that sips gas at $3.50 a gallon here in NC and zips around
the mountains with gusto.

Yeah, next time it will take 15 minutes. Like hell. Pulling this
thing reminds me of the cussing I hear in a hangar when somebody is
working on a Cessna 210. You need chipmunk hands and fingers to work
on one of those pigs.

 

Buy fluorescent bulbs like these

http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/images/04_05_18_flbulbs.jpg

They aren't as apt to fail from every slight jolt of the trouble light.