If you are talking about the little red wire that goes from the alternator to charge the battery you can pick up a new connector pigtail wire at napa or online cheap and solder it DON'T use a butt connector on this.

Remember also that as has been mentioned an old battery with a new alternator may have a voltage drop.

Also you might as well replace ALL cables and clean your ground point as you will have a 1 volt drop due to corrosion even with a new battery showing on the gauge in the dash, so long as you have 13.5 to 14.5 you are good, any less or more than that by 1 volt and your alternator will be dead soon !! ( ask me how i know !! ).

 

I changed the end of the wire and it fixed my charging a little bit and no I did not solder it. I am thinking that it is mainly the problem and was gonna replace that first and if it did not fix it all the way I was gonna get a new alternator also.

Thanks for the info on the autozone alternators.

EDIT: I think I will try soldering the connector on sometime tomorrow and hope that it helps. Maybe that will fix it! But, if anyone could give me some tips on how to replace the red wire with a new one, that would be great too!!!

 

Alternators are rated in amps they can charge, so a standard 86-91 alternator is rated at 105 amps.
If your accessory load is higher, cooling fans, a/c clutch, headlights, demister etc, your alternator may struggle to charge it at idle with idle on some early C4s factory set at 560 rpm. You will notice if you select volts on your display when you run headlights, cooling fans, a/c at low idle your battery volts start to drop for every accessory you activate.
The factory alternator may be fine for a stock vette, however modified engines needing more cooling. Aftermarket hi power amps stereo systems will need a higher rated alternator at idle, otherwise the car will draw its extra power requirements from the battery if your battery is old it may not last with the loads put on it.
The powermaster alternators are so much better at keeping your battery charged, they give 80 amps at idle and 140 amps higher in the rev range.
That will prevent the volts dropping after prolonged idle and slow speeds, i had my low volts warning come on at times whick would be ok when driving of and back to 13 volts.
Now with a powermaster alternator the low volts warning never comes on and is always 12.8 at prolonged idle to 13.9 volts on the display when cruising. (This all depends on what your battery volts are the alternator will cycle charging, like when you start your car you will see 13.9 but later drop to when the battery is at ful charge)

Hope this helps

 

That actually helped. Lot I might get a power master alternator anyway since I have a little bit more powerful than stock radiator cooling fan, an upgraded sterio system, and a little bit better headlights that draw more power. I think I'll get a power master alternator because of that but I think the power master requires a different gauge wire coming from the back of the alternator. So now I just need to figure out what gauge wire and how to replace the wire which does not look to fun.

Thanks for the help, Stephen

 

If you upgrade to the higher amperage alt you should replace that wire that screws onto the batt terminal with a larger diameter. I used painless part#30709

 

GM alternators sucked, until 1996. Then they figured it out.

 

Do you think you could PM me how to change that wire, whether it is hard or not, or if I should just take it to a local mechanic? If so that would be great and thanks for the part number.