If your car is a V8,1961-66 318 alternator is an easy swap

From: Daven Anderson
Email: l96lfury@springmail.com
Date: November 25, 2001

Comments

If your car is a V8,the 35 amp alternator used on the 1961-66 318 "poly" V8's is a bolt-on swap. If you find a complete 1961-66 poly 318 V8,that will have the brackets that will work on your engine, and you can also take the right hand exhaust manifold from that engine if you don't want to cut the generator support off of the original exhaust manifold. There are rebuild kits to upgrade this early large case alternator to 105 amps,as well. I do think that if your CD player is really draining the battery that much,the generator,voltage regulator AND THE BATTERY should be checked. Really,if all those are good,you should be able to run a CD head unit with no problem. Modern high reserve capacity batteries are even more beneficial in a DC generator car! All you have to keep in mind is,is that a DC generator does not generate current at idle (and alternators do),so at idle it's "all battery". So if you drive in traffic a lot,and you have the CD player and/or the headlights on, it's not a bad idea to rev the engine a bit at stoplights (above 1000 rpm so the generator will be charging) to keep the battery more charged up. Really,if you have a correctly working generator, regulator and a gel cell battery like the Optima, that setup will run even a high power CD head unit with ease (I've done it!). You'd only NEED an alternator if you had multiple external power amplifiers. My 105 amp alternator and Optima battery run a 600w RMS four amp system with no problems! So you can either get the generator setup sorted out (just use the best battery you can get,an Optima is worth every penny,even more so for a generator car!) or the early alternator is an easy swap and can be upped to 105 amps as well. The case is so large that even tripling the coil winds does not give it heat buildup problems (such as the small case '78-87 GM alternators were infamous for),the early case is larger than the later Mopar 100 amp alternator of the 1970's (itself a pretty bulletproof piece!).