Alternator maintenacne.

[69XP383]

I have what appears to be an original alternator sitting on a 383. Not in car. When I free spin the alternator pulley I can hear an odd-sounding clicking noise. Can I dissassemble the alternator and inspect it, if so, what should I be looking for and or replace once it's apart? This sound may be normal. Should I just take it in somewhere and have them test it?

[Chatt69chgr]

I have never disassembled a Mopar alternator but did take the one apart on my old Ford Fairlane several times to replace the front bearing.  But it made a grinding noise.  I could always tell when it needed to be replaced by the sound.  I believe there are only two contacting parts in an alternator:  the bearings and the slip rings.  I seem to recall that there was a hole in the housing of the Ford alternator and the trick was to push in the slip rings and insert an unbent paper clip.  Then you slid the shells together and pulled the paper clip (wire) out.  I would go ahead and take it apart and have a look.  If you can't figure it out or get it back together you can always take it somewhere then.  Also, most car parts places will test alternators free.  If you do need to buy one, make sure you get a quality one.  There is rebuilt and remanufactured.  I think rebuilt is where they just replace any bad parts.  Remanufactured is where they go through the thing from one end to the other replacing all the wear components.  ACDelco has a quality piece but you usually have to order it from Autopartsgiant or RockAuto.  I made the mistake of buying one of the cheap units several years ago with a "lifetime" warranty.  Every three months it would fail.  They didn't mind giving me another but I got tired of replacing them so threw it in the garbage and got a good one at NAPA.  Never had a problem with it again.

[Nacho-RT74]

the two parts of the alternators that tipically go bad are ROTOR and FRONT BEARING ( at least my experience )... to get acces to both you need a puller...

well, you can replace a rotor with bearing on it, since they are cheap, but anyway will need a puller to remove the pulley.

Rest of parts:

On double field square back alternators all parts are easy to replace since everything is simply bolted. Of course rear bearing is pressed, but is not hard. You can replace with a hammer and a socket ( gently ) to remove and install if you don't have a press.

Round back single fields alternators are the not than easy since diodes are pressed on housing and stator is solded. Easy but not that easy like double field ones

[69XP383]

Thanks for the info...