Have just done swapping the sucker out. It developed a crack
some months ago in the case casting causing the rotor to grind against the stator making a horrible noise.
A ton of thanks to Ray! Without being inspired and encouraged by his how-to I wouldn't have gone ahead to take the challenge.
I'd like to also share a bit of what I experienced during the job and hope it can help those of you who may want to tackle this, as well as some tooling options that I found worked for me.
1) 13mm socket: this is for the two larger bolts that hold the alternator to its bracket. I found a 1/2" socket, instead, works better for me, especially for the bolt in the upper location where I have very limited wrench wiggle space between the firewall and the rear timing cover, barely enough for one ratchet click. A 1/2" socket is 0.3mm smaller than a 13mm one, and it fits the bolt head almost snug, transferring that 0.3mm play to more effective wrench wiggle travel. I was using a flex-head ratchet wrench to deal with the upper 13mm bolt, and it performed very well in finding the maximum travel. It has a long enough handle too, and no extension was needed.
2) lower 13mm bolt removal/install: I basically followed Ray's approach, except that I was using a combination of wobble extensions and was not using any U-joints. A U-joint tends to make a train of extensions harder to handle, IMO. To tighten that bolt, a smaller combination of ratchet-6"-3"-13mm socket will suffice if you're using wobble extensions. First reach and fit the socket onto the bolt, then attach the wrench to the rear end of the extension.
3) 10mm bolt removal: I didn't use a train of extensions to remove/install the 10mm bolt on the back of the alternator. I managed to approach that bolt with a 1/2"-drive breaker bar (as it has a longer handle than a 3/8" one) from right underneath and break it loose with a 10mm socket, then slide my left hand in there and remove the bolt with a tiny gear wrench (4" long) fitted with a 10mm socket.
The car purrs like a kitty again!
