Yes I did say that. Of course it was a full time Porsche master mechanic type guy doing the job. In reality it might have been 8-10 minutes, but much of that was him explaining the job to me and showing me what he was doing. He did the job on an airport runway with tools he scrounged from others in our make shift paddock area.

With my second replacement alternator a few days ago, I did the job myself in about 30 minutes and I'm an absolute novice under the hood....this was my first mechanical part change on my Vette (heck I've never even removed my fuel rail covers!).

In reality the job is a piece of cake. Disconnect battery. Pop off the air intake plastic assembly (one screw to loosen on the big "hose" clamp) and gently pull over the 3 rubber snap in grommets (I also removed the mass airflow sensor connector). Then it's just one wrench (15mm) on the belt tensioner to get the belt loose and off the alternator (you don't remove the bolt, just pull it against the spring load to remove the "tension" in the belt and slide it off the alternator pulley). One bolt to remove the main electric cable connected to the alternator, and one small snap in plastic cable connector right on top. Lastly a 15mm socket wrench to remove the two bolts holding the alternator to the engine.

Reverse steps above to install new one.

The only things that took any time for me were disconnecting the mass airflow sensor (I struggled to get that to disconnect without straining any of the wires....this took a few minutes for me because I was being so careful), and finding a picture of the belt path on the Internet for the front of an LS3 (I thought I might have popped the belt off one of the pulleys and I wanted to double check that I got it back on 100% properly).

Admittedly, I had a bit of confidence with my very recent "how-to" session with a master mechanic, but I really think it's a fairly easy job on a Corvette.

My 5 minute comment might have been a slight exaggeration....but only by a minute or two!

 

The Pep Boys units are "remanufactured" items. The first "remanufactured" one looked brand spanking new (but then again, it only worked for a few weeks). Its replacement wasn't quite as "pretty", but it seems to be working ok so far (only 2 days, but initial low voltage symptoms have gone away as battery charged itself back up).

I was a little disheartened with the failure of the initial rebuilt one and have looked at OEM and some of the upgrades mentioned in this thread. The general consensus of my autocross buddies is that alternators are generally pretty reliable and that I'll probably be fine with this remanufactured unit. It has a lifetime warranty and change out is a piece of cake, so for now at least, I'm probably going to see how this one works out.

Of course I'll be kicking myself if this one breaks!

 

I wish you good luck. I went through one after another remanufactured or rebuild units. I never found one that lasted more than a month. I went back to new. This was not in the Corvette though.

 

Yes, that's something I'm afraid of.

I daily drive my car and run it hard autocrossing on the weekends, so perhaps I'll have to bite the bullet and spend a little cash on quality. Of course my buddies all shared stories of OEM parts that kept failing on them too.

These upgraded aftermarket units sure do look nice (although I'm not really looking for shiny stuff under the hood), performance and hopefully great quality has me considering one of these as a next step.

 

Hopefully OP has solved his problem...but alas, my problem isn't. My second remanufactured alternator just isn't up to the job. It did OK on the daily commute and voltages stayed up above 14 all week....but took the car autocrossing on Sunday, and the story changed. While idling the car while in grid (just waiting my turn) with the AC on (it was a hot humid day here) I just watched the voltage drop lower and lower. Run a lap, and then watch the voltage drop again...down into the 10 volt range. I took a couple of slow drives around the paddock area just to get the battery charged back up in between run groups. Long story short...I'm learning my lesson...time to find a better unit.

I'll be looking at OEM (although wide price differences from different vendors) and perhaps the upgraded units mentioned in this thread.

 

Your experience mirrors mine, sadly. I have no idea why a reman'd alternator can't be reliable but mine never were. I too ended up with a newly mfg OEM one after all.

Hope this is the pot of gold at the end of your electric trail.

 

in most cars changing the alternator is a major undertaking, one of my cars needed the engine jacked up before removing the bolts! thanks for listing the steps

 

There min project at most to remove (have done it a few times now).

Disconnect the battery positive terminal, move to the belt tensioner on the same side of the hood, take the tension off the belt and unloop the belt from the belt tension pulley and remove the wrench.

Now move to the other side of the car and on the alternator, un-clip the top wire connector harness, remove the wire from the back terminal under the rubber boot, remove the two bolts that hold it to the bracket, pull it up, turn it sideways, and it pulls right out.
Note, you don't even need to remove the fuel rail cover.

Back in is pretty much just as fast, but you loose about 1 min when you go to put the belt back on the belt tensioner and make sure that the belt is seated correctly on the pulleys and idler instead, then have to reindex the windows and set the clock time.
Note, when you reset the radio clock time, just push and hold both min and hour button in and this will kick you into time reset mode. press and hold the both buttons in again, and the radio will set to the local RDS time.

 

Any car that has the alternator on the top of the engine makes for a fairly quick change. Belt, control plug and battery+ cable. Then R&R and replace those three items. Cars that have the alternator down below can be completely different and a pain.

 

I had similar issues at idle, and I thought it must be my alternator. Turns out I had a faulty wire on my starter which was causing arcing and all sorts of problems. After fixing the wire and tightening up a loose nut, my car idles with normal voltage.