Guys, heres the thing. When its doing what its doing it can be any number of things. To make it worse you can replace something, and it'll "fix" the problem for a while, but then you end up with the same problem later on. Heres what happened to me. I was four wheelin and busted my battery hold down. The battery was moving around really bad and i cracked it. Wouldnt hold water for more than a few hours. Got a new battery and everything seemed fine for a while. Then it started happening again. Replaced both battery cables and it fixed it again for a while. Gets worse. Somehow in the process of changing battery and screwing up my cables the alternator burned out. i also shorted out the computer. So even after getting the new battery, cables, and alternator i had to get a new computer put in. Still gets worse. At same time that my alternator got burned from the messed up battery, i burned up the starter too. So ive had to replace a lot of stuff to solve this problem. Heres my point: as far as i know the problem you are having is a bunch of stuff put together... be very careful when you are messing with this stuff or else you could send some goofy power surge through your truck and end up replacing even more stuff like i had to. Well good luck!

 

Sounds like you might have the small wires on the wrong side of the solenoid. make sure there on the side that gets power all the time

 

exactly! got it! thanks man.

anywho, it seems the serpentine belt is working fine on the alternator with the wide wheel. its not moving or slipping, and it seems to charge fine. ill keep an eye.

thanks

 

No problem glad to help. That happened to friend of mine not long ago, he tried for a week to start his ranger turned out when he replaced the solenoid he got it backwards

I dont really understand what kind of belt you have. Is it a v-belt on a serpentine pully or just a narrower serpentine belt. most altenators fit many applications so if your vehicle still runs a v-belt you should change the pullys with the one from your old altenator. Its easy to do if you have an impact but almost impossible with hand tools. If you have a good relationship with your garage they will probably do it for free

 

unfortunately, since the car wasn't running, i returned the old alternator for the core refund before i realized the problem.

the new alternator has a wide pulley with ridges, and the belt is like,a thin little deal that is meant to slip in to a V. however, it seems to spin the alternator just fine, so i suppose itll do.

 

I wouldn't leave the alt that way, take it back and tell them you need one with a V belt pulley.

 

The serpentine pully will wear out your belt really fast. since you dont have the original pully and they probably wont return the alternator (they dont allow returns on electrical parts.) you can take it to a junk yard to get they right pully put on it. Likely won't cost that much and it will save you money and possible break-downs by not wearing the belt as fast.

 

I had the same problem where u would hit the stearing column and the car would die. There is a big rectangular wire plug that plugs in just behind the key under the stearing column. Because the wires angle off at 90 degrees it stresses the connection and on mine it was pulling one side of the connector part way out. the only way i could keep it in was to zip tie around the entire column to hold it in place. But now u can hit it as hard as you want and the car wont die.

 

I thought thats what I had sugested X-p with the solenoid