I changed the alternator, to fix the intermittent charging problem.
If it ever fails again, I wont bother fixing it, but just give it away
Maybe I'm too much of a GM guy to deal with this dam Jeep. The alternator location must have been an afterthought engineering brain fart.

 

 

I feel ya.

 

why don't ya trade yur jeep in on a vega?

 

Uh what? The alternator is easy peasy. Sure you gotta maneuver around the AC lines a bit but it's very accessible.

 

Ok Mr. "GM guy" you want to see where the alternator on my moms Oldsmobile car is? You got to pull the power steering pump, battery and battery tray. Now that was a engineering brain fart.

 

My GM pickups have alternators that are right out in the open, easy to get to. My daughter's GM car? A nightmare, buried under layers of other stuff that has to come off first. I've never done it, and I'm not going to.

The Jeep is a piece of cake.

 

I think I swapped my alternator out in an Autozone parking lot, in a blizzard, in less than 45 minutes total.

Autozone guys were nice enough to let me warm up inside because I didn't even have proper cold-weather gloves (just some crappy mechanix work gloves).
Yeah, you gotta crawl underneath and arguably that is a terrible spot for a Jeep alternator (prone to splashing and mud ingestion), but its not the worst in the world.

 

NOTHING is worse than the alternator on a 2007 Ford Focus! That is hell! Lol

 

What's the point of this post? It's not a question, it's not to help anyone, it's just a complaint about a vehicle model that had one of the longest production runs of any of the big three, relatively unchanged for nearly 20 years.

Yep, sure is a pos. Better go back to that GMC Jimmy with that rockin' 4.3 that was so great and well engineered and thought out.

 

Sure got you guys stirred up !
I went on you tube to see what was there on changing the alternator. The guy that did the video had a Cherokee alright, but nothing was in the way when he did it, and it went easy for him. His brackets were different & not in the way like mine.
I un-bolted and moved the AC accumulator a bit which helped, and the battery, to get at the top bolt. The bottom bolt wouldn't budge. Had to heat the mount & alt a bit with the torch to get it loose.
Then the fun started... tried every which way to tip the alternator to fish it out of there, and when it did finally come out it was push & shove operation, squeezing it through. New one went back in the same way.
The other fun part was that the temp was 10 degrees out in my driveway, which was not that bothersome, since I could run in & warm up.

This is my wife's jewel & not mine by the way.

And yes, I do have a GM pickup with an alternator that's easy to change, and I did it when it had 272,000 original miles on it. It now has 278 K on it, and it IS a 4.3 V-6.
Not faulting the 4.0 Jeep engine, which seems very tough & runs very good with lots of zip.

Rant is ended..

 

Sorry to hear u had a problem bill.
I have a '94 with ac, & was able to r/r a alternator up & out with a little wrangling.

 

On mine the hardest part it loosening the belt tension off the steering pump. Took a whole 15 minutes to do.

 

I had already replaced the water pump and radiator hoses last year, which took some time but wasn't difficult. And did the gasket change on the leaky oil filter adapter, which wasn't bad either.
And the rear brake lines & wheel cylinders.......

After the alternator fiasco, the left front tire went flat due to some damage on the side wall...sort of insult to injury type thing..

My wife loves this thing !

 

Some people should just stick with their shade tree...