Club 80-90 Forums

Steph's bracket arrived to today, so Ive just fitted it. I'm about to send mine off to Keith - not sure if he's still up for it given Cruz's discovery - but if he is there are a couple of details that perhaps need ironing out first.

Firstly, Steph's bracket had a very shallow dog-leg in it, as though the upper and lower alternator bolts should be offset, by maybe 1cm. None of the photos/diagrams I found showed this dog-leg, and since my mounting bolts seemed not to be offset, I went ahead and straightened the bracket in my vice (and now I've probably introduced a weak spot that will mean it'll fracture the same way my old one did!). So the first question is "should there be a dog-leg/offset in this bracket, or should it be flat?"

Secondly, Steph's bracket is 2cm longer than mine. And in fact, I think this was the gist of the post that I couldn't find before - I seem to remember the OP saying he'd not been able to buy a replacement of the right length. In my case, the alternator belt has been on a few months and has stretched a bit from new, so the longer bracket is OK at the moment. On my old bracket the upper bolt was just over half way along the slot (just above the fracture), but on this new bracket it's towards the bottom. I'm pretty sure a new belt might just be too short for this longer bracket. So second question - why this difference in lengths?





Keith - if you're still up for making some replacements, I'd buy one of the shorter ones from you, just to be sure that I'll be able to get a brand new belt on when the time comes. In fact, if we can establish which length it is that Classic sells, maybe there's a bit of demand for the other length.

Looking more closely at my original bracket, it's obviously been repaired at some point in the past - signs of welding and grinding flat. Not sure why you'd do that if you could get a new one for £4.09. So maybe this shorter one really is difficult to replace. Anybody out there care to measure their alternator bracket for comparison? Why are there two different lengths?

Happy to make some....its no bother.

Great, thanks Keith

It occurs to me that a 200mm bracket, with a slot that starts from the short end of the short one and goes to the long end of the long one, might be the best of both worlds. I can't see that it would cause any problems. And it could even be a mm or two thicker without causing a problem (to try and avoid it fracturing), although strictly speaking that would move the upper mount point out of line by the extra thickness.

Ok i have a bracket from an early engine and its 180mm long and flat
i have a late van and the bracket is 200mm long with a kink, never noticed that before

on brickwerks website they say there were two belt lengths fitted 1075 and 1100
"1075 is meant to be for the 90 a alternator but this is often not the case"
Perhaps its a belt length alternator geometry thing, early engines had a different alternator

http://www.brickwerks.co.uk/index.php/a ... lt-wp.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you are making them, as cjh says make a 200mm bracket with a slot that starts at the 180mm position, then its universal, i cant think the slight kink will matter, indeed i wonder if tge kink is caused when its tightened depending upon alternator

Thanks for checking. Mine's an early engine, with a 45A alternator and I bought the 1075 belt from brickwerks after measuring the old one. Now it's stretched a bit, the bolt was nicely in the middle of the shorter bracket. So I guess that's what it is. If you can't get hold of the shorter bracket, then the 1100 belt seems like it might be the answer. But a bespoke bracket that covers all the options seems ideal.

Im with you on the slot tolerance....

Very quick question but you couldn't give me the full dimensions as I've got a mate who runs a machine shop who said he'll do it as a favour for me. (Desperate to get her running as she's not been since I bought her last year and I'm on a roll

Rich

RichH75 wrote:Very quick question but you couldn't give me the full dimensions as I've got a mate who runs a machine shop who said he'll do it as a favour for me. (Desperate to get her running as she's not been since I bought her last year and I'm on a roll

Rich

For the shorter of the two brackets, the dimensions are as follows:
Length: 180mm
Width: 22.5m
Thickness: 5mm
Hole diameter and slot width: 8.5mm
Slot length: 59mm (finishing 6.5mm from the end)

For the longer bracket, just add 20mm to the overall length.

I'm not going to move all the bedding, tat, draws, carpet and lid to check, but I am pretty sure mine has that dog leg in it. However, on my 86 DG with 60 Amp, the dog leg is not needed and mine has a redundant "spare" nut simply "slid" over the bolt, being used as a spacer to get the alignment correct.

Not sure if this is relevant or not but the bracket I sent Chris was from my '89 van although at some point an early DG engine has been swapped in.
Can't remember what amps my alternator was before it packed in either.

Didn't think a simple alternator bracket would cause so much debate

I have the broken bracket now....will get some made early next week.

Will probably go with aluminium.....

It would be interesting to hear some opinions as to whether aluminium is suitable. I can't see why not. When I replaced my broken bracket with the one Cosmicsheep sent me the alternator didn't move at all - the bottom bolt held it against the tension of the belt, so I don't think it's under much load once all the bolts are done up. Aluminium would also allow people to introduce the dog-leg if they discovered their alternator setup needs it - but I'm not sure that anyone who's commented has actually needed the dog-leg as yet.

I would have thought that aluminium would work harden and crack very quick compared to steel. That is quite a length of relatively thin material if you stick to the original dimensions. Personally I wouldn't use it - be interested to see other thoughts on it also.

I agree aluminium is not ideal for this, wants to be mild steel i think, aluminium with a slot in in like that will be as strong as cheese