I REALLY hate Hondas right about now!

[jmowreader]

Specifically, the one I have.

As I reported over the weekend, getting the alternator out of a 1986 Accord is a grade-A pain in the ass. Well...getting it back in is worse.

This is because the place you stick the alternator through (remember, it goes in from the bottom, not the top like rational cars do) is about four millimeters smaller than the alternator is.

This morning, I went to get the new alternator. The first place I went is Diffin's Auto Salvage just off Yadkin Road in Fayetteville. I ALWAYS go to Diffin's first because the old guy who runs it has about a brazillion cats to eat the mice that live in his junkyard, and many of them will let you pet them--which is strange for essentially-feral cats. He's got four-day-old kittens right now, so that was fun. Unfortunately, what he DIDN'T have was an Accord of the proper year range. Yes, he had six Accords...and all of them were the old ancient kind with the alternator in front of the engine, where it was before they figured out the alternator lasts longer if it's not next to the exhaust pipe. (The alternator I replaced was the 20-year-old original one, so maybe there's some sense to this.)

Off to a place that rebuilds alternators. This guy rebuilds them in-house and does a very nice job--I put one of his alternators in my wife's car three years ago and it's been flawless. I spent $90 plus tax on this damn thing, but it's basically new so that's one thing I'll never have to worry about again. Home again.

The first thing I did was to hook the field wire up. An alternator weighs about 20 pounds and it's unwieldy to handle under there, so I figured I was going to drop it about eight times (I only dropped it six times) and didn't want a faceful of car part. Then I started shoving and pushing and prying and using foreign-language obscenities and getting pissed at the little asshole who forgot that someone's going to change this fucking part every once in a while...on Friday I managed to bang the shit out of my right elbow and now it's painful as fuck, today I managed to bang the shit out my left elbow so I'll have a matched set. Ninety minutes. It took ninety fucking minutes just to get to the part where the alternator was CLOSE to where it was supposed to go. Anyway, I eventually got the fucking thing up behind the engine where it goes. I'm not sure how. All I know is that one second it's sitting in my hand and the next second it's sitting on the little shelf behind the engine. Then I had to spin it around, stick it up in the bracket and shove the pivot bolt in.

At this point my wife came out to go shopping and asked if I was going to try out for that new band the Oil Covered Man Group. Well, not until I can drum without my elbows killing me.

(By comparison, I can change the alternator in a normal car in about fifteen minutes. Unhook the battery, two bolts, two wires, adjust belt tension with a crowbar, reconnect battery. Done.)

Up topside, things went a bit smoother. All you need do is stick the threaded part of the adjuster bolt through the adjuster bolt hole, stick the top alternator mounting bolt through the mount-bolt hole in the adjuster bolt, put the mount bolt hole into the alternator, put the belt on, set tension and tighten everything down. Piece of cake.

After that, you put the suspension back together--you gotta remove the drive axle to get the alternator out, so you gotta put the suspension back together once it's in--refill the transmission because some of the oil ran out when you took the drive axle out, hook up the battery, check fluids and go for a drive.

The strange thing is, the "PGM-FI" check engine light always used to come on about two miles down the road and stay on. I figured it was the oxygen sensor, which is an ultra-expensive part, but on this trip the light didn't come on and I went a very long way. It idles better, for some weird reason. It restarts better. Maybe the alternator was starting to get flukey when I bought the car?