Just finished an alternator upgrade to my `83 tonight. Works good & was well pleased. The alternator I have now on the car came from Pull-A-Part & was cheap! Cheap is good! For all of you folks wanting a cheap high power upgrade, this is one option that you can pursue. Seems to help a lot with the power windows I added & I can use the heater blower control on high also with the headlights on & what not. Not to mention the 1 KW audio system I have in the car!

I bought an alternator from a 1997 Ford Taurus 3.0 OHV vehicle, which set me back about 25 bones. The brackets & pulley I cut myself from aluminum. Was pretty easy really. Other alternatives exist if you want to come up with those items on your own. I like to play so spent some time making what I needed. I also picked up a fuse box out of another vehicle to fuse the output from the alternator to the battery. Cant remember what it was from but again, other alternatives exist for fusing options. I used 2 FLM 80 amp fusible links from AutoZone which ran me about $7.00. I put both of them in parallel to give me 160 Amps of fuse protection between the alternator & battery. In case of something really bad happening, you will have some protection from fire if something goes shorted.

The wire I used between the alternator & battery came from the Taurus I pillaged also. It appears to be 6 gauge wire. I figured since I was already raping the car, why not go ahead & get the battery charging cable as well. Glad I did!

The two V belts I bought are AutoZone Duralast 15320. Make sure you buy both of these at the same time or you may wind up with 2 different belt sizes although the part numbers are the same. Manufacturing tolerances can make a difference. I had to buy 4 before I found 2 that were the same size. These were all at different store locations. Just a heads up on this.

I will give the wiring info on my next post.

 

On the wiring of the alternator, there are 3 wires on the alternator harness. ( Suggest taking the plug too when you get the alternator )

1) Orange/Light blue
2) White/black
3) Green/Red

The Orange/Light blue wire goes to the battery thru a 10 amp fuse. This is the sensing wire.
The White/black wire loops around & goes right back into the alternator thru its own plug. Won`t need to worry about figuring out where this one goes.
Green/Red goes to the alternator light in the car. Connect it to the white/black wire in the alternator plug. ( Actually mine was white/green. Go figure. Manual says White/Black )

The hardware used in the mounting arrangement of the alternator is the original bolt which held the factory Mazda alternator. To attach the Ford alternator to my brackets I made, I used the Ford mounting bolt which was taken also when I got the alternator off of the Taurus. By doing this, I didn`t have to hit a hardware store for the hardware I needed to complete the project.

Take care everyone!

 

good job i put a buick 130amp on once

what kinda fuel injection setup do you have?can we have pics maybe a little info on your car

 

i love it when people get creative like that, good install

 

Thanks folks for the compliments!

The car itself is fuel injected with a Haltech E6 ECU. There are four injectors in the fuel rails attached to a Weber 50 mm throttlebody. I went with a Cartech turbo system & it is running about 8 PSI of boost. The engine is a Pettit 4 port 13B motor that has been street ported. Also has a lightweight steel flywheel & Centerforce clutch. I think I have had more fun in it than I have had in my `94. The car pretty much is a sleeper until the gas pedal is "exercised". The exhaust note is quiet running through town & I don`t have that "mad hornet in a jar" sound coming from the tailpipe. The muffler is a Racing beat dual tip unit that is connected to one of their pre-silencers I bought around the same time.

Not much of a vehicle to drive in the rain or in the snow. The back tires want to spin too quickly. I usually only get it out on nice days because of that.

 

very nice

 

Is that a stock color? What paint code if so? Limited wheels? Car looks good!

~T.J.

 

The car was originally a Limited Edition RX7. It was a champagne color with rust in many spots on the hood & other places. To round out its "character", about a month or so after I bought it, it received a bunch of hail dents from golf ball or bigger sized ice chunks which fell effortlessly from the sky. I think I saw a few smiley faces on some of those chunks which were bouncing off the car as it was happening.

The interior was seriously ragged too. Seats were torn, door panels were cracking apart & many plastics were faded. Red interior but many parts were kinda light pink in color where they had sat in the sun for years. I had the seats redone, restored most of the interior panels & replaced the carpet in the back. Shortly afterward, I had the entire car stripped down to bare metal & then repainted. Replaced the sunroof top, hood & one fender. The bumper skin in the back had a crack in it so replaced it also. The engine compartment & door jambs were sprayed while everything was out. One of my pet peeves is opening the hood or door & seeing a different color than what the outside of a car is. Wanted to do this one right. The paint & body guy had the car about 2 months.

 

How much did a paint job like that cost you? Was it a chain or some independant?

 

Was $2600 in the early 90`s. The guy was a professional auto body painter for one of the car dealers here in town & had a paint shop at home. Would have hated to have had the work done anywhere else as the whole job could have easily ran twice that. Was nice too that he lived only 5 minutes or so from where I was living at the time.

 

Does the alternator just wire up the same as the original? I have a 50 watt amp that is in the back and the 55 amp alternator just isnt really keeping up all that well, I have to shut the radio off a couple blocks before stopping just so it wont die.

 

where did you get the interior done? did you do it yourself? i like what you did with the door panels. i have the maroon interior also and everything is fading also. i have been trying to replace whatever i can find. its so hard to find good maroon interior parts.

 

See post number 2. You will only need one wire out of the RX7 factory plug that you will use. It goes to the indicator light in the instrument cluster.

The 1st gen Rx7s didn`t have much in the way of "electrical headroom". Adding a higher current alternator is helpful if you have "extras" that demand the juice. Do a search on "alternator" in the first gen section. There are ways others have found also to beef up their electrical systems. Some were pretty easy actually.

 

I did the interior myself. The only thing I didn`t do , was the seats. Someone else did those. I bought all new Mazda door panels, interior panels, door & window seals & a bunch of other interior parts. I spent as much on interior & exterior parts as I did on what I gave for the car when I bought it. In my opinion, I paid too much for the car when I purchased it but since I wanted it so badly & had wanted one since I was in HS ( I graduated in `83 ), well.......

Ya know, Rx7s are addictive. I now have 3. May be why at my age I have no wife or kids! Gotta` a lot of cool stories to tell though for when I am in an old folks home. Even then, I`ll bet I`ll be racing wheelchairs down the halls & being chased by nurses yelling at me to slow down. Yep. Even then, things won`t have changed much for me.

 

glad to hear you're still having fun. keep up the great work. im jealous that you have 3 rx7s. my wife will only allow me to one. i am hoping that when we move into a bigger house i will be allowed to have more projects. for now one will do...

 

Thank you so much for all the help. Once you drive a rotary there really is no going back I got my 85' gs when I was 14 and havent quite finished working on it. Hopefully soon.

 

I've checked a handful of alternator threads and posts. But just wanted to see if what option would be best in this situation.

I have an 85 GS, 12a. It has the stock original 55amp Alt (at least it looks like it). PO had a 4 speaker Kenwood setup, and Pioneer heatunit installed everything else is regular in terms of electronics.
I read up on the 86-88 70amp Alt "plug and play" upgrade. I can grab one on ebay for $105 right now. There is also a dealer on ebay who sells a high output FB alternator of 130amps.

Which would you think is the best bet to get, for the following: Current 4 speaker Kenwood setup, and Pioneer heatunit (not sure the wattage), a single or dual Durale electric fan set up, and possibly some Halo headlights with DLRs (that might be set up on a independent 4way toggle switch, as my stalk headlight switch for low beams works when it wants , and the always brights never work, however flash to pass works always)

Would the 70amp S4 alt be sufficient for this set up? If I go with the 130 amp do I need to route bigger gauge wires around, I want to avoid as much electrical work as possible, its not my jam)

Thanks in advance!

 

If you go to 130 amp you should really consider adding wiring to handle that otherwise you risk overloading the OEM wiring and also blowing the fusible links if you are lucky. The 2G 70 can be used with no changes, I did that upgrade a while ago and it works great and no stress to the wiring. BTW, you should direct wire the headlights and fans using relays to take the load off the OEM loom and the headlight combo switch as well.

 

What he said. I have a similar sound setup on my SE, but with an amp driving a Bazooka tube in the hatch area, and the 2nd Gen 70amp alternator has done relly well with no complications of wiring involved. It's pretty much plug and play, and if you read around you'll find that many other Alternators from different cars or years have internal rectifiers that are power switched separately which result in a battery drain on our cars. Not worth the risk of getting stranded somewhere.

As a sidenote, your Alternator is only as good as your battery; think of the Alternator as an electron pump, and the battery as an electron storage tank. Anything electrical on the car - when on - is a hole in the storage tank leaking electrons at various rates, some big leaks others small. The Alternator output is the size of the pump and a bigger pump will only refill that storage tank (battery) faster. If your battery is too small or too weak to begin with, you run into other problems.

Upgrade your battery first, and then see if you even need an Alternator. I run an underdrive pulley, dual belt, on the Alternator to REDUCE its rotational speed a at high RPM. This also has the effect of reducing the electron pump output at idle or low RPM cruising, but my Yellow Top Optima has plenty of storage to run everything.

 

ebay 165 amps


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