Does everyone else spin a new alternator before they install it?

mommucked

mommucked

Endeavoring to persevere
Joined
Sep 26, 2011
Location
Rural Apex n.c.
My Sister in laws boyfriend ordered an alternator for her 4runner online because it was cheaper?. He's a great carpenter but no mechanic. I was asked to replace it this evening and had it in the 01 4runner in about 30 mins. as the sun went down. Cranked it up and the dash battery light was on, looked and the pulley was not turning o_O. Shut it down after about a minute and checked the pulley tension and it was tight enough. Touched the pulley and burned my fingers. I removed the belt and found the Alt. was hanging up bad/grinding while I turned it by hand. Then I picked up the box it was shipped in and saw a slice/split in the bottom of the cardboard box. Looking inside the box I could see the box had obviously been dropped and even though it was wrapped in plastic wrapped foam the pulley/shaft had smashed through the box. I could have kicked myself because I spun the old denso that I pulled and it spun just fine, but I did'nt bother to check the new one before I installed it :mad:
 
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Yes. Spin all the things. Even my kids toys before I give them to him, haha. :burnout:
 
I went through a period of time I made Auto Zone put them on the machine before I paid for it.
We were replacing a bad one on our old Dodge Cube van racecar hauler.
3 in a row bad right out of the box.
He gave us the 4th one and a full refund.

Matt
 
I order 90% of all my vehicle and toy parts on line, through ebay. Cheapest around and I rarely have an issue.

Yes, I spin all rotating parts first.
 
I just had another bad experience with parts store remans a few weeks ago in a need-it-now situation for a work truck. Noisy bearings on the reman, but couldn't hear anything by hand unless you really spun it fast. After we pulled it back out with very little run time, it was audibly louder when spun by hand.

Two days later, got the original unit rebuilt locally (Charlotte) and for less money; it works great. Took the reman back to the store and got a refund.

Never bring the core back, it shuts down your refund options. Every time I deal with reman parts, I say "never again" about buying reman parts.
 
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