[WestVic-Zook]

So is there any need to modify or change any brackets on a vitara g16b engine??

[Gwagensteve]

I've outlined how I trimmed my G16B brackets in my build thread, but here's the summary.

Top bracket:



Bottom bracket before trimming:



Bottom bracket after trimming:





I had steering shaft clearance problems due to my power steer (installed without a wedge) and my motor placement (20mm to the right) so I used a stock belt and clocked the alternator hard against the water pump. If you dont have to do this then the top bracket might not need any/much work at all.

Steve.

[WestVic-Zook]

Ok got the alternator mounted on the g16b vit engine, can anyone tell me the plug on the vitara loom has a white with red stripe and black with white stripe which wire goes to where on the falcon 2 pin connector also the charge wire from the vitara alternator goes from it into the loom and back to the battery when it goes into the loom does it go anywhere else or not and in the fusebox is it just a matter or putting in a larger fuse or nothing needs to be altered in it??

[WestVic-Zook]

can anyone please tell me which which wires from the stock vitara alternator go to what pins on the falcon alternator, i need this info to Finnish the installation off

[Gwagensteve]

I saw your PM but couldn't check when I read it.

With the falcon alternator installed, red with white to the top pin and black with white to the bottom pin.

Steve.

[WestVic-Zook]

ao what size fuse is used between the battery and the white/yellow wire on a G16B vitara for ignition as the bloke who made my zook forgot to put on in place??

[daisy]

OK... i did this last week - the night before i went on a glasshouse mountains trip (durin the heavy rain!!)

Those alternators charge very very well.. I was impressed.

THEY DONT LIKE MUD... thats the biggest thing.. the brushes got stuck and I had to pull it apart and get the brushes moving again - heaps of silicone spray on it now and hopefully wont have the same issue.

In regards to mounting it... I drilled out the bottom mounting bolts on the alternator to 10.8mm and re-tapped the bracket itself to m10 and just put m10 x 1 and half bolts in place. works really good that way.

Top bracket - just exteneded it as the slots were slightly too short for the full tension of the belt. no biggie.

Just only one gripe about the alternator is the location.. I'm going to look at re-mounting it to the top of the power steering pump one day when I can be bothered or get sick of pullin it out to clean it out after a bit of mud...

Other than that.. very very easy fit up and I had it fitted and running within 20 mins of gettin the new alternator box opened lol

[WestVic-Zook]

stuff buying new ones just go grab a few from ya local wrecker, mount them up see if they charge if they don't take them back and try a few more

as for mud best idea is take a water fire extinguisher with you and blast it with water, it usually free's them up when out in the bush, always carry a good spare only takes 15 minutes to change one

I did this conversion on my G16B vitara engine in my zook, I had to grind the top bracket like Steve did and also had to just grind the outside edges down where it bolts to on the bottom bracket, didn't need to drill out the bracket i just used the original bolts

wiring was simple white/red stripe to the top pin and black/white stripe to bottom pin, 100 amp fusible link and a 40 amp fuse for the ignition

[Bretski]

This thread has been a great read.
When I pulled my alternator out of my vitara G16A during strip down the main power terminal stud snapped off deep inside the unit. I could try pulling it apart and repairing but after reading this thread it's prob just as easy to replace with bigger unit. The Vitata already has ribbed pulleys so I'm Guessing I can skip all these swap over bits. I'm not running a lot of power hungry accessories and devices so I was curious to know if the 80amp Magna Alternator is an easier fit in the tight space.

[Bretski]

Bretski wrote:

This thread has been a great read.
When I pulled my alternator out of my vitara G16A during strip down the main power terminal stud snapped off deep inside the unit. I could try pulling it apart and repairing but after reading this thread it's prob just as easy to replace with bigger unit. The Vitata already has ribbed pulleys so I'm Guessing I can skip all these swap over bits. I'm not running a lot of power hungry accessories and devices so I was curious to know if the 80amp Magna Alternator is an easier fit in the tight space.

BUMP

[Teracis]

Bretski wrote:

This thread has been a great read.
When I pulled my alternator out of my vitara G16A during strip down the main power terminal stud snapped off deep inside the unit. I could try pulling it apart and repairing but after reading this thread it's prob just as easy to replace with bigger unit. The Vitata already has ribbed pulleys so I'm Guessing I can skip all these swap over bits. I'm not running a lot of power hungry accessories and devices so I was curious to know if the 80amp Magna Alternator is an easier fit in the tight space.

I am doing a similar thing because I'm fitting a G16B to a Sierra. So far all I needed was the falcon alt and I'm using the alt brackets from my G13 so it's pretty much a case of wiring it up. I don't know how large the magna version is but the falcon one seems to fit just fine mate.

[Bretski]

Teracis wrote:

Bretski wrote:

This thread has been a great read.
When I pulled my alternator out of my vitara G16A during strip down the main power terminal stud snapped off deep inside the unit. I could try pulling it apart and repairing but after reading this thread it's prob just as easy to replace with bigger unit. The Vitata already has ribbed pulleys so I'm Guessing I can skip all these swap over bits. I'm not running a lot of power hungry accessories and devices so I was curious to know if the 80amp Magna Alternator is an easier fit in the tight space.

I am doing a similar thing because I'm fitting a G16B to a Sierra. So far all I needed was the falcon alt and I'm using the alt brackets from my G13 so it's pretty much a case of wiring it up. I don't know how large the magna version is but the falcon one seems to fit just fine mate.

Thanks

Just seems overkill but they're cheap I guess.

[whincup]

Bretski wrote:

Just seems overkill but they're cheap I guess.

it is in a way, but if you have a massive one thats only operating at 20% its gotta be better than a small one operating at 80%, thats how i see it... plus they're easier to get hold of than sierra/vitara alternators. my local wrecker sells them for $40...

[Bretski]

Ok ... So I went to my Local Wreckers this week with my Broken Alternator in Hand and a printout of this thread.

I tell the grease monkeys what i'm after and they then point to a mountain sized pile of Alternators and said go for your life. Apparently they're having a bit of a change around and resorting all their parts so everything just dumped in 1 GIANT Pile.

So i rolled up my sleeves and started digging through it. I did find the Falcon Alternators that are mainly talked about in here. But its quite a Physical Size Increase. And I really don't need the 100amps

I started digging around for the Magna Alts as also mentioned in here. I did find some but none matched the offset of the bracket to the pulley.

However ... ... What i did find is almost perfect match in some other Mitsubishi Fitments.

Vitara Alt - 50amps.

Mitsubishi Triton - 60amps only slightly larger physically. The Bracket mounting points are identical to the vitara just larger bolt holes. This alternator has Blade style Pin Outs so will be easy to wire up and this is what I eventually chose. They where actually nice enough to let me hack the plug and charge wire out of a body so i got a bonus.

Mitsubishi Lancer - 75amp and 80amp. (Probs slightly different spec cars or year models) These where psyically slightly larger again in their size but the brackets and pulley to braket offset spot on again. I was going to go for one of these but they had a smaller 4 pin style connector and I wasn't 100% certain how compatable this would be. Wasn't sure if it had additional load sensors etc. So i gave a them a miss. But the additional Ampers would have been nice but not really required. But it might suit someone with a little more Auto Electrical Knowledge .

I'll Post up some pics when I start reassembling everything. Hope this helps others

[whincup]

yes it is a big size difference... but where that fills is essentially unused space anyway. and either way you have to change the plug on the side and upgrade the main power wire from the alt to the battery, so why bother with something inferior if there's a tried, tested and proven method that in the end is better, and more readily available?

just my 2 cents...

[Gwagensteve]

X2.

I don't understand the "I don't need 100A so I'm going to do all the same work to fit something smaller" thing. The 100A capacity is irrelevant, it's the ability to effectively charge the battery at idle, or at idle with the headlights on that's the point of the 100A alternator.

A falcon alternator puts out more amps at 1500rpm than a vitara alternator can at peak. That's an advantage regardless of whether you winch, or have lots of lights- it just means the battery can recover more quickly.

Steve.

[Bretski]

We're not talking about running Monster truck with huge electrical loads. Perhaps if your doing a lot of winching or night time rockcrawling with 1000watts of work and spot lights blaring away i can understand wanting a bigger unit. And the Falcon Fit is not a straight forward swap... there's grinding and drilling or fiddling.

Mines only G16A so not even EFI. No Winch and running HID's so my power requirements are well below even the 50amps of the standard alternator. I may put in a second battery but i'll probably use a DC to DC Charger so still little load.

My post is to show people there are ALTERNATIVES (Pun intended ) and bigger is not always better.

Would you put a 600CCA SLA Battery in your LED Headlamp Torch??? Its possible and not all that hard but necessary?

[jono165]

Bretski wrote:

Mines only G16A so not even EFI. No Winch and running HID's so my power requirements are well below even the 50amps of the standard alternator.

It doesn't matter if you are not drawing 50 amps the fact is that a 50amp alternator can simply not produce enough charge at low RPM if you have your headlights on high beam. If you don't think you need any more capacity then why don't you just get another stock alternator which requires no modification at all to fit.

Bretski wrote:

We're not talking about running Monster truck with huge electrical loads. Perhaps if your doing a lot of winching or night time rockcrawling with 1000watts of work and spot lights blaring away i can understand wanting a bigger unit. And the Falcon Fit is not a straight forward swap... there's grinding and drilling or fiddling.

If you fitted a falcon alt you wouldn't need to do as much grinding or modification as Steve, his engine is mounted differently so he had to get the alt to sit closer to the block. You should only need to modify the bottom bracket (shown above) or source one off a 1.3 sierra motor a drill the bottom hole to accept the lower falcon bolt. No matter what you choose there is still some degree of fiddling.

Chances are if you get one from a wreckers your going to need another down the track, my original falcon alt lasted 3 months so I bought a new one. It's so much easier to modify around what's so commonly available. It took me less than a few hours to fit my falcon alt to my sierra and that included upgrading the wiring, fitting a 2nd fusebox, soldering on the falcon connector, a switched relay to the sense terminal and swapping the pulleys and belts on a sierra to multirib.

[Bretski]

jono165 wrote:

If you don't think you need any more capacity then why don't you just get another stock alternator which requires no modification at all to fit.

Because these Zook Alternators aren't easy to come across. And rebuilds / Evil Bay New ones are $200-$200

Sheeesh.... The whole point of my post was for peeps who are happy with 50 amps and are like me having trouble finding second hand replacements. I was just offering an easily fitted alternative with lots of supply at any wreckers.

Please Don't get me wrong here... I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with putting the Falcon unit in. It's a good upgrade if you have lots of electrical load and like you say lots of crawling at low RPM At nite winching and lotsa lights blaring. Im not arguing this point at all.

It does worry me that you've had to replace your Falcon unit only after 3 months... what a pain in the Butt... I'm hoping that as the unit i got from a 4wd triton might also be a bit more akin to 4wd conditions. I hope i never have to replace it.

And I've done my Maths

2 x high beams @ 75 watts = 150 watts
2 x driving lights @ 100 watts = 200 watts (But putting on HID's so will be much less)
Park lights dash lights tail lights perhaps onther 50 watts
400watts div by 12 - 13.7 volts = 30 amps approx
Add to this a few more amps draw to run the (Carb) engine, stereo, uhf, fridge perhaps totalling another 10amps

So really worst case scenario for me is max draw of around 40amps so my 60 amp alternator more than enough for my needs. And before you jump up and down again I agree 100amps might be best but... well i've said enough and I'm not arguing just putting up options... the whole point of a forum community.

[jono165]

Fair enough. My first one was of unknown km's so it wasnt unexpected, a new one wasnt very expensive anyway. The construction is the same as any other alternator, they all don't like mud etc.

[whincup]

i understand what you're saying bretski... but, to use your analogy, if you had an led headlamp torch and needed a bigger battery for it, and it took the same amount of effort and cost to put in a 100CCA as it would to put in a 600CCA, why would you not? i payed $40 for a second hand one at the wreckers (had it for over a year and still fine) and found them on ebay new for around $200.

basically, if you can get one bigger than stock that literally bolts in, that's ideal and i can understand why you would. i originally wanted the same, because i agree 110amps isnt exactly necessary. but if it still requires a few mods, i personally wouldnt turn down the biggest/cheapest/most common conversion.

[Bretski]

@whincup As previously stated the Falcon Upgrade is a worthwhile option especially if your running lots or accessories and winching etc.

I'm Sure Suzuki engineers after spending Millions on R&D didn't make a mistake calculating the load requirements for the Stock Alternator.

As stock replacements are hard to come by I was just offering a cheap and very easy and commonly available alternative that requires no mods other than 2 wires.

As a few people mentioned Magna Swaps etc I figured people might be interested in other alternatives.

Cheers
Bretski.

[JrZook]

Bretski wrote:

I'm Sure Suzuki engineers after spending Millions on R&D didn't make a mistake calculating the load requirements for the Stock Alternator.

For a bog stock suzuki and a very good stock alternator this assumption is most likely perfectly fine.

Don't always assume that the "Millions on R&D" results in the best performing item/setup. It is heavily cost based and usually results in accessories that are just "adequate" for the job...

I wonder if suzuki tested the alternator output at idle for extended periods of time with all the accessories on?...

[Bretski]

JrZook wrote:

Bretski wrote:

I wonder if suzuki tested the alternator output at idle for extended periods of time with all the accessories on?...

Probably not ... and if this is what your going to be doing I'd be the first to recommend going the whole hog and going 100+ Amp alternator.

And I'd also recommend going for a smaller pulley on the alternator to increase its rpm at low revs.

Horses for courses.

[Critical Energy]

Will any of these fit the f10a engine?

[Gwagensteve]

Yes, sort of. It's definitely possible. I had one on my F6A (which was running a 1.0 body loom), and although the F6A and F10A are quite different, it shouldn't be too hard.

Remember you'll need to bridge out the external regulator under the passenger side of the firewall.

Steve.

[sideways]

Does anyone know what does fit an f10a?

[Bretski]

sideways wrote:

Does anyone know what does fit an f10a?

I'm not sure mate. Hopefully some one will chime in or just do what I did. Take your old unit with you and ask the wreckers if you can rat through their shelves to find a good match. Just make sure that its a commonly avail unit so if it dies u can replace without too much drama.

[sideways]

I might do that when I'm down south over summer. I'm embarrassingly good friends with the wreckers there.

[Daleyzooker]

How do I do this to my gti conversion when I do it