Has anyone bothered to replace these when they go bad, or should the entire unit be swapped? Its like $11 vs. many more dollars.

I suspect mine of causing some noise, the alternator is a rebuilt and about 3 years old. When I will work on the car this coming weekend, I'll run it without the alternator belt and see how it sounds, but I think thats where the noise is from.

 

hmmmm might be better to get a reman/rebuilt unit w/ lifetime warranty.

if the only thing that's dead w/ the alternator is the bearing then might be worth it to swap it but if the unit is quite old then other parts might need to be replaced.

 

Its not dead, just noisy. Runs fine but will probably die eventually.

I just dont want the random downtime when it finally fails and I have to wait for the new one to ship in.

When the original died I took it apart for kicks. Its simple construction and seems like a straightforward replacement, after all isnt this how they are "rebuilt" in the first place?

 

well if you see it running fine now then by all means get 2 new bearings and put them in. might be a good idea to get new brushes too.

the rebuilt ones just adds new voltage regulator...so if you can get that piece too then you're good to go.

 

Courtesy says that for one of the bearings, there is only a single one in the entire country. The second one is on national back-order and takes 4-8 weeks, yipes! Gotta love that the beta parts site went live.

I'm going to call around the local alternator shops and see if they will sell me bearings which fit this alternator, its just a Hitachi and they are so common that I'm sure I can just get the part rebuilders use, instead of the one Nissan is able to get.

 

for the bearing you can probably just get the bearing size and match it up to the bearing number and you can get the bearing from any bearing outlet.

last i checked it's just a sealed ball bearing with inner and outter races. if you can get the old one off you might be able to read the numbers off it.

 

I could do that, but since its a bit of a pain to get it in/out, and as an ode to laziness, I'd like to just do this once per repair.

If someone besides Danny is reading, and has a spare VE alternator around, please dismember it and give me the numbers

 

I Would swap the whole unit They can be found for cheap

 

Been there, done that. OEs are unreliable at this age, rebuilds for the VE (like mine) dont last long and still cost $100+, new OEM is several hundred dollars.

I'm looking at this as a simple fix to a minor problem which can eventually develop into something worse, and then I would have to replace the entire unit. Look at it as a preventative measure.

 

Front bearing.

Rear bearing.

 

MyGreenMax94 = rules

 

how about that? one end is from japan, the other from korea? unless the pics are from different times, different alternators

 

Different parts can come from all over, assembly took place in Japan though... at least back then.

 

The alty parts shown are from a reman unit,hence the different part #s...

My guess is they only replaced one of the bearings,or the reman company has two different vendors for each bearing..

 

NSK ok
KBC not so good

 

The front bearing was the source of my alty noise,the inner race had considerable play..