Hi all,

My alternator is dead and i want to have a crack at fixing it myself. With the car off the battery has 12v in it, with the car on i get anywhere between 14.3v at startup then it goes down and sits anywhere from 13.5 to 12v. I adjusted the throttle screw to raise the revs and it went from sitting at ~13.3v to ~13.5v after a drive. After idling for a while it usually drops back to 12v. The voltage must have been dropping for many months - ive been getting intermittent battery light but whenever i would pull over to measure the voltage it would blink off.

This leads me to think it is the brushes that have worn out, but perhaps its the entire regulator? Does anyone know what brushes i can use in this model and where to find them? (Its the bosch with the external regulator, TH '99 V6 3.5L) Apparently repco and an auto elec i tried can't help.

Regards,
fiveseven

Can't help? The brushes are a common and cheap part.
If desperate, search for the regulator part on eBay, get the reg model on your alternator first - just looked and the brushes and full reg are available there.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RE60-Alternator-Voltage-Regulator-RE-60-Bosch-style-/111190797753

Thanks for the ebay tip MadMax. I found a local autoelectric shop that had replacement brushes and regulator - turns out it was an RE72 reg that the bosch alternator needs.

I had to ring around to several places before finding one that stocked brushes & regs, and the one i found said they barely sold any these days. One bloke said the cost of labour for fixing them is more than buying new ones so they dont bother stocking parts.