hey guys, a while ago my alternator went so my dad replaced it with one from oreillys. about a month after that one kicked the bucket and (we lost the receipt) i had to buy another refurb from Autozone... my friend and i put it in, and it seemed to work well for another month until today the battery+brake lights went on and off intermitently and the headlights started dimming

this time around i kept the receipt so i can exchange this alternator for another, but i dont want to keep doing this if the alternator keeps dying



does anybody know what is causing this problem? one person suggested earlier that it could be the coolant leaking and dripping onto the alternator..but i dont think that that is the case this time. what else is there?

check and make sure the alt is properly grounded.

also check your battery cables to see if there is any openings or cracks in them, did you remove your splash shield from underneath your car when you did the alt the first time? if so you may be getting water from the street on your alt and therefore reducing it's life dramatically. I work at an auto shop and it is possible to get a bad alt a couple times in a row, it's happened before, did you replace the battery when your alt went bad *** a dead battery will require the alt to put out its highest charge and that sometimes will shorten the alt life too,other than that i don't know. good luck

What's up Tony? I'v had bad luck with the alternators from Autozone, Pepboys and the like. The ones I'v got from nissan seem to be the only ones that work right. Just my .02. Hit up Brian at Courtrsy. When ya gonna be back in Dallas?

1. when the first alt was replaced i bought a new duralast battery, so that shouldnt be bad

2. the splash guard is still there, the only thing missing is the fender liner for the left wheel well

3. the battery cables should be good because the stereo always works and stuff

4. battery ground? how/where? :eek:

my friend did warn me that alternators, especially rebuilt ones, from places like autozone and oreillys do suck... but i didnt have the cash to get one from napa and especially now that ive already bought one i can only exchange it and i cant afford to buy a whole 'nother one

hey, how many amperage is a battery suppose to give? im using my friends portable "manual batterycharger" and it showed about 7 DC amps. i left it on overnight and now its barely giving me 2 amps.

im going back to dallas as soon as i can get this car working... i dont want to be stuck on i35 with a dead battery :O

For the battery ground look right by the thermostat housing. Follow that cable and it should ground to the chassis down below the relay box on the motor side of the battery. You can see it sortta. Make shure there is no crosion (sp) or crap where it go's to the motor or chassis. The alt grounds under the harness on the pass side of the car, up by the front by the 3 plugs.

it's battery voltage you want to measure not ampage the voltage from a healthy alt and batt should be 14.6 volts read this using a dvom,you can also check the voltage drop from the batt cables to the alt and then from the alt to the batt. one more thing don't buy remans from kragen

Is the radiator hose dripping on the alt? I lost one that way.

tomorrow im gonna retighten the radiator connections, just in case

is there any other precautions i can take or anything else i shoudl check ?

i doubt you have a problem with your car..search the other nissan boards..the autozone remanufactured alternators just suck ass. They will all die and if you find a good one that lasts, you'll be lucky. Nissan OEM is the way to go, but its so damn expensive that i wounldn't blame anyone for going to autozone. you should have a portable battery charger in case it ever craps out on you, or at the very least jumper cables.

I'll bump this one up because Alternators from autozone do suck. Here is my story. My alt died on me 11/2006. So since I was on my down from Canada heading to NYC i was lucky enough to make it to my old college town on the way to NYC.

So I bought the Autozone alty since i needed one asap. Fast forward to July 2007 and the alternator i bought in november flashes the battery and brake lights. From previous experience I knew what those lights meant. I head back to autozone with my reciept and pick up a replacement. I 've had it for about a month and it no longer charges the battery. I don't know what went wrong. After a track day at cmp the alternator crapped out on the way back home to Atlanta. I put in a spare nissan alternator i have from my shell and that is giving me 13.95 Volts right now. AUtozone alternators SUCK!

i went through 5 altis in 2 months!! i didnt *** wtf to do.. it was to the point were advance didnt wanna give me anymore or my money back.. so i went to nissan and they checked it out.. everything was good because they said they will only give me my money back if i get something from the dealer saying its not the system doiing it.. i got my money back and then got one from napa..

not to mention i demolish all my wiring system to see if there was somethign wrong with that.. i added a couple more grounds and then hooked up the napa one and it hasent happen since

run another ground wire directly off of the alternator to make sure your grounded. in addition to leaving the stock ground hooked up. i have done it in every one of my cars. works great.

also make sure u have no fluid/water getting to it. classicaddict went threw 3 in 1 month because of a slow antifreeze leak dripping onto the alt.

The grounds around the alternator checked out fine. Gave me the minimum resistance on my multimeter. Also the continuity checked out fine as well. As for a coolant leak i'll have to check that out. I have not noticed any drips in the two weeks i've been working on this problem. Also I'm not overheating or low on coolant. I've had the engine up to the point where the fans come on and I didn't notice any thing dripping from the rad hose above the radiator. I'll keep my eye on it though just to make sure.

The stupid thing is the alternator checked out fine at autozone. It made 14.6 volts at start up but about a minute and a half later the voltage at the battery would go down to 12.4.

I checked out the voltage directly from the alternator outlet and it was just battery voltage. I checked the same on my nissan spare and it was 14.22Volts. My battery is getting 13.95 VOlts so I know I'm losing voltage somewhere. My battery ground cable has taken a beating from the acid so i"M gonna clean that up and see if it ups my voltage to above 14. I learned my lesson though. I'm going to stick to Nissan Alternators from now on. I hope i can get my money back on the autzone alternator.

Ok to add to this. I went back to autozone and they won't give me my money back.

They gave me another alternator. WHich worked fine for a week before my track day at Road Atlanta.

After the first day of racetrack duty the thing died. I found out the next morning that it was dead and my battery was slowly draining away.

I had to replace an alternator in 30 mins at the track in order to make my first session of the day. I used my nissan spare that I took from my shell. The bearing is going on my spare but it held up to 4 sessions on the track despite its 190k miles. IT was cooler on the second day so that might have had something to do with it.


I'm thinking that Autozone alternators can't take the high heat of track driving or they don't like being at high rpm for long periods of time.

I am having the same issue. I question whether or not the voltage regulator is replaced if still functioning during the reman process. Also out of the three remans I have had, all have a much smaller pulley than the oem. Off to put the third alternator is my car.

try to get an alternator off a b15. I believe they are rated 80amps.

Also, check your electrical connections like the headlights, fogs etc. We had a car eat alternators due to a bad connection on the fog light.