My pulley came today and I just put it on.

Well, Wayne, we either have different pulleys, or different alternators? My 1-7/8" pulley is quite different, but it fits fine with no interference or rubbing, and it's at the correct depth as far as I can tell.

I can now put the high beams and offroad lights on without the voltage falling below 12.6 to 12.8 at idle hot. When the cooling fan kicks in it drops to 12.4 -- but it was much worse than that before. The very slightest goose of the pedal and change in idle brings it up well over 12 volts -- so mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.

 

Could you post exactly what the invoice stated as far as a description.

 

Item: D1-CS130-018
Description: 1-7/8" diameter 6-Groove Serpentine type

Although the flange on the back is bigger, it clears everything. The inner bearing race around the shaft at the alternator (or a shoulder on the shaft, not sure which) touches the back of that larger flange on the pulley, but the pulley doesn't touch the body of the alternator anywhere.

 

He never called me back on my situation so I called him:

I spoke to you about 2 pulleys I bought and you never called me back.

I don't see any notes, what is the problem.

They don't fit, you were gonna look into making them fit.

You can cut the collar off the alternator.

The pulley has to be remanufactured to make the collar deeper and narrower. There is nothing I can do to the alternator to make it work.

Send them back and I'll refund them.

Will you refund the freight I have to pay?

No. Did I say they would fit when you ordered them?

I gave you the specific application when I ordered them.

I won't pay the return freight.

it's almost not worthwhile for me to pay $7 freight to get a $20 refund. Can you just refund it?

No. you need to send them back.

Alright. I don't think I should pay the freight back. Let me just make a credit card claim and work it that way.

JEESH! WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE. OK Crybaby. I'll SEND YOU A UPS RETURN TAG. IT MUST BE IN THE ORIGINAL BOX
WITH THE ORIGINAL INVOICE. WHAT"S YOUR NAME.

Wayne F.....

(end of relevant conversation)

 

Mine fits. On both my alternators. Are you SURE they don't fit? Did you try it out? It sounds almost like you haven't actually test fit it, tightened it, and turned it?

 

I am taking some pics as we speak. If you are willing, we can figure out what my problem is and maybe help someone else down the road.

 

first pic show the oem vs the over/under pulleys. the oem has a collar that is .96" wide (the silver looking part). The other pulley has a collar that is 1.143" wide:




The "hole" inside the alternator is 1.018" wide:


It won't go in. i am trying to stuff a 1.14" part in a 1.01" hole:

 

When I spoke with him about this he said "newer alts" may do that, just cut the collar off. He specified being carefull, to cover it to keep shavings out, etc. I just cut it, but what I suspected occured. Cutting the collar off doesn't make the hole bigger. It still won't fit.


I guess the next step is to get a dremel and make the hole bigger and hopefully not damage anything.

 

Holy cow! Your alternator is COMPLETELY different than both the ones here! Ford must have several "compatible" vendors for these.

I'm sorry I questioned your judgement on this. I simply don't have that collar, and the inner bearing race (which turns with the shaft) projects beyond the surface of the shaft and the pulley on mine sits nicely on the race -- which is where the stock one nestled.

So basically, it's possible to have one of at least two different styles: one compatible with those pulleys, and one NOT.

 

Thanks. Describing all of this leaves everybody scratching their heads. collar depth, collar width, yada yada yada. Pictures can literally be worth 1000 words as far as getting a point across.

It does have motorcraft stamped into.

 

Here's what I'm thinking, and it may not have anything to do with it:

Your Ranger, and probably most others out there, were likely built in the Twin Cities plant, while the ones out here were built in Edison. I'm thinking that most new alternators and rebuilds GENERALLY come from a vendor in the region (though there are exceptions). I'm thinking that possibly the ones here are different than the ones out there because despite the "Motorcraft" embossing, they are made by different contractors for Ford and are slightly different.

Or not. I have no idea -- but I can't think of many other reasons for such differences.

 

This is interesting to me because I have a slight charging problem on the Thunderbird.It has a 130 amp (3G I think) alternator on it which looks the same as the one on the Ranger(except for mounting points).At idle with the air on MAX at night with the lights on,the amp gauge gets pretty low in drive.If I kick it up into neutral it is fine.My truck has never done this and charges perfect at idle with everything turned on.I wanted to go to a smaller pully on the Tbird alt. to help it charge better at idle.If it wouldn't be too much trouble John,could you post the pics of your alt. with the pulley off so I can compare yours and Wayne's to see which mine has.That way if Wayne has a tough time getting his money back I can take one off of his hands(paying him for it of coarse),that is if my alt. is like yours.

 

Okay, Marc, I'll get to that sometime in the next week as I have some time off.

 

BTW,Merry Christmas John.Plese tell the family the same also.

 

Marc, I am pretty sure it is as simple as the alt has the collar shown in my picture or it doesn't. If you look at my pulleys, you can see on the black one that it is undercut to clear the collar. My sources tell me the design is a 1996+ change across the board. I cannot explain Griggs having the old style.

 

Ok,thanks Wayne.I have had my pulley off before and don't recall if it looks like yours or not.I am going to stop by Advance Auto Parts tomorrow (my friend is the manager there)and inspect a new replacement alt and see if the case is like yours or not.I did try to use the stock alt. pulley off of my old 5.0 Mustang and it wouldn't work so I think I am in the same boat as you are.

 

I did meet a new player that may be able to help on this. I will be talking to him next week to see if I can find a cheaper alternative. Currently the best I can find is about $80 shipped. At that price getting an aftermarket alternator makes more sense (imo).

 

Adding offroad lights or audio equipment will overload the factory 95A alternator so I decided to upgrade the charging system.
Recently ordered and installed a 3G 160A alternator with HD bridge rectifier and voltage regulator, upgraded the stock charging lead going from the alternator to the distribution block from 8 gauge course strand to 4 gauge fine strand and replaced the stock battery that had 540 CCA capacity with a spiral cell having 1000 CCA capacity.
Nice to have 14.3-14.6V under load....

OR 4x4

 

What do you have at idle, hot, with everything turned on?

 

Havent seen it drop below 14.2V with everything on including the headlights.

OR 4x4

 

At idle? Very good. I need to look into such an alternator. The 130 amp one I have can't hold the voltage up at idle, even with the smaller pulley. When the e-fan kicks in, that's it and it drops to 12.2 or so. It'll hold 13 to 13.2 with the lights on hot, but not any better than that, unfortunately. The e-fan kills it. I'm pretty much tired of popping it into neutral to bring the revs up when idling at traffic lights and all to keep the voltage up.

 

The alternator puts out approximately 90A at idle..... With the upgraded charging lead and 1000A battery... there is plenty of capacity.

OR 4x4

 

Mine is not so much the charging lead -- that's really not a problem until you approach the really high amperages. What the problem is, appears to be that it is still a "small" alternator and the way they got the amps out of it was to use fewer turns of heavier gauge wire in the stator -- without changing the field, or increasing the stator size to allow enough turns of wire with the heavier wire.

The result is an alternator with less internal resistance that can put it out at high RPM, but is actually LESS able to put it out at low RPM. Many online references warn you about such "high output" alternators. They are basically rewound conventional alternators, without the necessary changes to allow full performance at idle.

The design you have is more what I'm looking for, and I'll just have to break loose the money to do it right. I got this one handed to me for free -- and I'm grateful. However, sometimes a deal is not the deal you want, lol.

 

For those interested, I just pulled the pulley off my 20044.0 4x4. It is sized different than the 2000 3.0 Automatic I got from the wrecking yard.
I have oem 4.0 4x4 pulley that measures 2.11
I have oem 3.0 automatic that measures 2.3
I have a custom made $29 pulley that measures 2.43 (underdrive)

The key here is the 2004 4x4 manual pulley is smaller than the 2000 3.0 Pulley. Smaller for an alternator means overdrive.

If anyone needs an overdrive pulley at this point, shoot me a PM. With a little measuring I can get someone fixed up. I'm putting the larger pulley on as we speak.