LTD Alternator Conversion by SnowWing

[SnowWing]

All,

I am glad to report my alternator conversion is complete and my Wing is back together and on the road for lots of short and long test runs.

I will post a full picture report as soon as I get time to put it all together. The conversion was a home brew based on Don's famous methodology. In advance of the report if anyone has any LTD conversion questions please feel free to send me a PM or ask.

Some key points in the meantime.

I used a 4.25 inch crank pulley (1992 Toyota Camry part found on Ebay for 10 bucks), 3 groove belt and 50A Geo Metro alternator. This looks identical to the 55A however perhaps it's slightly physically smaller and hence more suited to the reduced space to be found on the LTD / SEi. I get 12.9V at the battery at idle 1000 rpm (50A alternator) and full charge around 2500rpm. In a word FANTASTIC! While I was converting I also changed the timing belts and spark plugs. I modified the original fan by moving it up and to the right, butchering one of the legs and the shroud and tilting the fan. I have good clearance between the fan blades and crank pulley. I had some issues on the second test run with the fan interfering with the shroud probably due to the new stress put on it by the modifications. I cured this by cutting and securing the shroud to release the stress. This is a temporary solution and I will probably go with the 8" permacool fan in the near future. On a few longer test runs the temperature hovers around 4 bars, goes to 5 and back to 4 with fan and motion so everything seems to be fine. I have no noticeable alternator whine, at idle or higher revs. This is a turbo charger like sound that has been associated with larger crank pulleys / spinning the alternator at higher revs at idle.

MVT (Most Valued Tool) during the whole process was definitely the grinder!

More detailed report and pictures to follow.

Thanks to Don for developing this solution and to everyone else who has offered opinion and advice. Great site, great people and great machine that hopefully now has many more miles to cover. :-bd

Ride Safe

Ray

[kwatts]

Ray,

Glad that you got it all figured out and that it is running well. Can't wait to see the pics of your install. I too used Don's methodology to do my conversion, and like you say, it is a good thing that we had someone like him to blaze a trail for us.

[SnowWing]

It took me two years to post them but better late than never I guess. Images below are from my Ltd alternator installation. I have many hundreds more so if anyone would like to see a different view or image that may not be included below please let me know.

My conversion is still going strong - probably has about 4000 miles on it now which by all accounts is small compared to some.