Well, my continuing effort to
"clean and bling" up my engine bay of my mustang is in full swing.
Some of my beginning thoughts can be found in a earlier post in this thread
here.
Kay mentioned I should disassemble and freshen up the stock alternator internals if I was going to polish the case.
You disassemble alternators to polish them. Taking the opportunity to freshen the brushes n bearings.
So, that was my plan even though I never took a alternator apart before.
I disassembled enough motors so it shouldn't be that hard.
Wrenched the unit off its aluminum bracket and started disassembling the external parts.
It is a good thing I didn't order a rebuild kit for the alternator as, come to find out, the sealed rear bearing was press fitted on the shaft and on the external housing!
Without using a puller and possibly damaging the back cover, and without a press to reassemble this known good working alternator, I decided to stop any further disassembly and consider saving this as a known good backup and ordering the chrome alternator I was considering.
And that is what I am doing.
Once I did get it reassembled, I repainted the fins and did a little test polishing to see how well I could make this stock unit look.
Well, it will never look as good as a chrome one but it will still work should I need a known good alternator in the future.
The aluminum did polish up pretty good using my Rupes Nano and some aggressive compound, I decided to remove the aluminum bracket from the engine and see how well I could polish that too.
FYI, a little tip if you work on your car or have consumable items you buy, you should date and mileage your parts and consumables!
As my water pump shows, It close to 20K and 4 years old but I remember installing it like it was last summer!
I have had this Duro Aluminum Jelly Cleaner and Brightener so I figured I see what it could do to the alternator bracket.
Following the directions, I didn't see any noticeable change to the part so I went back to my compound.
I'm breaking out all my polishing equipment in a effort to only polish the visible area of the bracket the alternator doesn't hide.
I have an agressive compound and my Rupes Nano, my drill and a Polishing kit to play with....
...One thing I didn't have was a dedicated metal polishing wheel on a high speed motor stand.
I might be looking into a stationary machine what will polish metal parts.
I see what you all do polishing metal and that word be quite impressive to have in my arsenal.
Using the tools at hand, I was able to polish up the bracket after some trial and error....
I installed the bracket back on the engine after ceramic coating the polished areas with Croftgate Assurance 2.0.
I cleaned up the rust on the engines head bolts and am now awaiting delivery of my chrome alternator due in today from American Muscle....
It 5 more amps than the stock one and I am a bit curious what the manufacture did to gain 5 amps compared to the 130 amp stock alternator? It gives them a better than stock "brag", I suppose....LOL!
plow, but left the bucket on instead.
