Now, this started out, me wanting to save money for my first purchase to replace an alternator on the first vehicle I ever owned. At the time I was working fast food and living at home, not making much money, I went the cheaper way and bought what I could afford at the time for my alternator. It was remanufactured because new at the time was way out of my budget!
I really just needed my car running to get back and forth to work. I learned the hard way after changing the alternator 3 times, that it would have been cheaper and more cost effective to go with a new one in the beginning. But not with the same auto parts retailer that I originally started with. The 4th time was the charm for me, I decided to buy a new one from a different dealer. I found out from a close friend that the first parts store I got my remanufactured alternator from, they only replace the necessary parts that look faulty in their rebuilds. Most of the time they DON’T EVEN TEST THEM!
Once I learned this from my trusted friend, it was one life lesson I vowed to teach other people! To my surprise helping a fellow car buddy’s grandfather at the beginning of this month, he had an 2007 Chevy Colorado that the alternator was malfunctioning which was replaced already with one remanufactured alternator which was doing the same thing as their last one, so I was notified of this, so I offered my services and went out to see what was going on. The alternator they replaced was still doing the same thing which was overcharging the battery. So I went out and helped them replace the alternator again, to my surprise that it was a remanufactured alternator. When looking at the copper windings in this alternator they looked burnt black and was NOT a good rebuild. His grandfather was shocked to hear that they were not any good. And I suggested to him to not ever get them again. So they had already gone and purchased a new alternator from another retailer. We installed it and then we made sure everything was tight and did a proper charge test. We tested the battery voltage to be sure that it had the proper voltage to start the truck and the voltage on the battery showed 12.7-volts. The last alternator that was overcharging was showing almost 16-volts while the truck was running, I put my tester on it and the voltage started decreasing down to 14.5-volts, for the optimal voltage limit it should be for any 12-volt vehicle. And my friend’s grandfather was very grateful.
He asked me about doing his rear brake system on the back of the truck. On this little Colorado, they are drum brakes on the rear. But we will save that for another post. Sorry, no pictures for this one, but I felt so strongly about helping people understand the low rate of success with remanufactured alternators I just had to write this post anyway!
