How To Change Alternator Clock Position or Degree

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

If you're changing the alternator in your car, you may find that in the alternator you buy, the clock position or the degree may not be correct. Here's the top of this alternator, and here's where my stud goes on. Here's the top of my replacement alternator, everything's the same except the stud is basically 180 degrees from where I need it to be. I'm going to show you how to do that.

Basically, all you're going to need is whatever wrench it takes to take out your bolts, and in this case it's an 8mm. On some vehicles you can use a toothpick or a plastic tube as I'll use and work it into the hole in the back. What this allows you to do is you can work it in there, and that actually holds the brushes in place. That's the challenge you face on this is that you have to hold the brushes into their positions while you turn the alternator.

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take this apart now and show you what I mean by that. First I'll take off all these four bolts. Once you have those four bolts removed, you're going to pull up and take this apart. You can see a little spring fell out which is fine. Inside, you can see there's a spring there and a little thing flopping around right here. That is your brush. What you're going to have to do is prepare those to go back in.
Now to get this back together. You have your two springs, and obviously your brushes inside the alternator, and I have a tube from your liquid penetrant or white grease or whatever. What also works is a round toothpick, but it does have to be the kind of heavy duty toothpicks. It has to be something that you can basically slide right through these holes.

What you do is you put the brushes in place, slide this through, and then you put the alternator together, and you pull it out the back. Start with the first one. You put the spring in, push it down with one finger, and by feel get the brush right on top of it, and then down into the sleeve. You just have to make sure that you put it right on top. Then when it gets down in the sleeve, you need to make sure it goes down. I'm not getting it right on top. Then you need to make sure that it goes in and it can bounce up and down nicely like that.

Then I take one of the bolts that I used that holds the alternator together, put it in, push the brush down, and then slide my plastic tube in. Now that's holding that first brush down, and then I take my second spring, put it in, and then I push it down with a finger and get my tube. Actually, what I get my tube up nice and long, and then push it down, push the tube on top of it, pull the tube out just enough that it then goes down in, and then push the tube in. Now you can see the tube is holding the spring down, and it's actually coming out the back slightly here.

Now I can just take my last brush and put it place. Hopefully, you can see there, I've got my last brush in place and I'm pushing down on it a little bit with my finger. Now I'm going to pull out my tube, now the brush goes down into place, and then the tube now is up over it. I'm pushing the tube through the hole. Now I've got my brushes down and my tubes over them. It's coming out the backside. I'm going to push it through so there's just a little bit sticking out right there.

Take the front side of my alternator, put this down onto it. Noting on my old one here, so my old one I want that to be there so I put it there, put it down on. Now I'll put all four bolts back in. Now that that's done, you can just slowly pull this out and your brushes are now in place.

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