Bent alternator shaft

[sethkirk_2005]

Has anyone ever seen this happen? It looks like the shaft of the alternator bent. Could there be an underlying cause or is this an example of a catestrophic alternator failure? I check everything else and it all seems fine. The dampner has no play in it.

 

[pauleyman]

physically dropped? Bent during a bad install/motor swap/tbelt job. It wouldn't run like that so what happened leading up to the discovery?

 

[sethkirk_2005]

I was driving home and a friend was driving behind me. He called me and told me sparks were coming from driver side of car. Got to a parking lot and started looking and that is what I found.

 

[mitsubishikid]

did you check your motor/trans mounts for play, also are you running the factory splash guards?
my thoughts are maybe a something hit it from under the car.

 

[sethkirk_2005]

Didn't check motor mounts or transmission mpunts. Previous owner cut splash guard so that's a possibility. Bought replacement at AZ and they talked like the bearing probably went and caused it to do that. They talked like they had seen it before.

 

[mitsubishikid]

can't tell by the images, but is the pulleys paint scratched anywhere that would be an indication that something outside contacted it, if it looks relatively unscathed it likely was internal damage.

 

[91-GS]

Could it be that pulley itself is bent? If there were internal damages, then most likely you will feel it turning it by hand. And the shaft is pretty thick to be bent from it being dropped especially since everything else looks ok.

 

[bmxfelon420]

I have seen this. It was almost unnoticeable. The way it reared its head was the guy kept breaking alternator brackets (the Jay Racing kit). He broke the first one, they sent him another one. That one broke in exactly the same way. They sent him a steel one, but he still was suspicious and tried to figure out what was causing it. Well he looked at it very closely when revving and noticed that it had a slight wobble that caused a vibration at very high revs. Since he was shifting at 9500, it was vibrating badly and just shaking the bracket to death. He just replaced the alternator and went with an underdrive pulley to slow it down and that fixed the issue.