New DeLorean 140 Amp Alternator

Before I undertook the job of cleaning up the look of the engine bay, I discovered that I was having low voltage readings on a drive home from a car show. After the car had cooled overnight, voltage was back up to where it should be. The car had the original Motorola 90 amp alternator, so I didn't have a lot of confidence in its ability to last much longer. Since I want my car to be as reliable as possible, I decided that it was a good time to go ahead and replace it.

Before I replaced the alternator, you can see that the voltage readings were not even up to 13V, which is a drop from where it used to be:

Here is the original from a picture I took a couple of years ago:

 

In the picture above, you can also see the stove piping to the right with the rusty bracket it is secured to over the exhaust manifold. These have both since been removed when I switched the routing of the intake piping in a few posts back.

I thought that the installation would be a direct bolt in and that the wires would hook right up with no modifications. I was surprised when I compared the two alternators side-by-side and discovered that there was a wire coming off of the new alternator where none existed on the original. See the wire in the picture below:

 A quick search at the DeLorean forum revealed that I just had to cut off the ring connector coming off of the car's wiring harness and crimp the wire to the wire coming off of the new alternator. I crimped them together and used heat shrink tubing to keep a clean look.

I also took the time to remove and clean the alternator mounting bracket. It was looking pretty sad with surface rust. I used a wire wheel to clean it up and then painted it black before installing back on the car. I forgot to take a picture of it. It's possible that nobody will see that clean bracket again since it's covered up by the new alternator. I also cleaned the grit and grime off of the belt tension bracket since I had it off the car.

Here is the new alternator all hooked up and working.

Notice the stove piping and the exhaust manifold bracket that have been removed to help clean the look of the engine bay.

When I first when to start the car, I noticed some strange behavior of the battery light in the dashboard. The battery light would flash with the key on but engine not running. It would flash for about 20 seconds until it faded into a solid red, then it would start blinking again. It did this continually. I thought that I had hooked something up incorrectly for sure. Another quick search on the DeLorean forum revealed that this is normal for that alternator. Apparently it is the result of some undocumented test mode. So I suppose that it will do that for the rest of the alternator's life.