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Senior Member
Alpine Owners Club
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Vancouver, WA
Posts: 1,719
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Today I & a fellow MH buddy changed out the Leese Neville Alternator with a Delco Remy 28Si unit.
The procedures are as follows, and I will try to put the pictures in at the appropriate time/place but if not they are numbered in sequence on my computer.
1. Make sure you have a good environment, put a big piece of carpet or cardboard under the coach to catch screws, nuts, etc when you drop them, the area is tight and at times only has room for one hand in there. Plus it is nice not to have to lie on the cold ground especially if it is wet.
2. Disable AGS (automatic genset start), unplug the coach from AC power and Turn off the master switches for the coach, make sure the inverter is off, and if it is easy, throw a dark cloth over any solar panel you have to keep it from charging the batteries directly. I had 4.70V at the alternator terminals when doing this job, we could not figure out where that voltage was feeding from. It might have been back feeding through the local sense wire, not sure. It also might have been the Solar Panel since it charges directly and is not switched off (I think) with the master switches.
2. Disconnect the negative cable from the coach batteries which goes to the back wall of the compartment. Put it up and away from the possibility of getting onto a positive pole or source of power. Also the black connection from the other 12V coach battery, remove this end and bend it toward the outside of the MH. The coach should now be electrically dead. Check to see if power is present by putting a meter on one red connection + & one black connection – on the back wall of the battery compartment, you should not get any voltage reading at all.
3. Take a large 1/2" ratchet with a 3" extension on it, and insert it into the idle arm pulley assembly (there is a square hole for it) and move it up or down to put slack into the serpentine belt so you can remove it from the alternator. Don't remove the belt; just tuck it over to the opposite side of the engine taking care to not forget how it is routed when you replace it later. Take a picture with your phone if you need to remember it well. Leave the ratchet/extension in the idler pulley hole, if you don’t you will not be able to reach it to replace the pulley when you are done changing the alternator!!!
4. There are lots of ty-wraps (wire ties) holding various small coolant lines from the coolant tank to various places, some of these need to be cut off - BE CAREFUL NOT TO CUT THE HOSES - as changing those would be even worse than the alternator. I used wire cutters to remove the ty-wraps; a razor knife would cut those hoses-badddddddd!!! Disconnect the low coolant sensor wire it's a clip type connector - move it out of the way to the left and away from you. There are two bolts holding the coolant overflow tank to a support frame member and you have to reach over and behind this support member to take those out. Do the bottom bolt first then the top one, having a 1/2” piece of board under the tank is a good thing, and then remove the top bolt. Once the tank is lose you can move it to the right and lean it over the pulley area.
Here is what it looks like with the tank leaning over to the right – note the belt and how it’s tucked toward the passenger side of the engine compartment. DS = Left side of coach - PS = right side of the coach. Note the frame member which is what the tank attaches too-lower left of picture its white in color.
5. Now Alternator removal, there is a nut at the back of the top bolt (rear of the alternator away from you) which needs to be removed. Mine was 18MM; leave the bolt in for now. On the bottom of the alternator is another bolt, it is attached from the back of the unit, away from you so you need remove this bolt with the same 18mm wrench. Now having some help holding the alternator, work the top bolt (long bolt) out, the alternator will fall down. See Picture w/bolt removed. Note the green wire, it’s part of the recall and attaches to a sensor on the side of the engine. It won’t get in the way, but it was ty-wrapped to one of the coolant hoses and that will have to be cut to move the tank, again, don’t cut those hoses.
6. Now turn the alternator pulley side down so you can get to the wires, on the LN, the #6 Red is BATT & the #6 Black is NEGATIVE; there are two additional smaller wires, one is RED and one is WHITE. According to mine, the red wire is a LOAD SENSE WIRE; the white one is INGITION wire. Remove all these wires, put electrical tape over the red wire in case you have voltage back feed from the unknown source we had. Now you can remove the alternator from the engine compartment.
7. We placed the old one on the ground horizontally and cleaned up the terminal area, so I could read the nomenclature of the wire terminals. (See Picture). You need to remove the pulley from the old alternator; mine was not on very tight, not anywhere near the 80 ft/lbs of torque of the new one. Take off the nut, remove the pulley, leave the fan thing on the old one you don’t need it on the new one. Take note of how the pulley was mounted, it goes on the same way on the new one. The "hold on nut" goes into the recessed area of the pulley.
8. Install the pulley on the new alternator; note the shaft of the new one is not keyed. It also has a spacer plate and under that is a big washer, do not remove these, leave them on, and place the pulley on over the shaft in the correct orientation. The end of the DR unit has a hex key hole to keep the shaft from turning when you tighten the pulley to 80 ft/lbs of torque. Make sure the alternator is in the HORIZONTAL POSITION – damage to the alternator will occur if you try to torque the pulley on in the vertical position. You will need a friend to hold the hex wrench in the head of the shaft while you tighten the nut down. You can figure out how he can gain leverage by thinking about adding a piece of long pipe over the hex wrench, the longer his pipe, the better he can resist the shaft from turning while you tighten down the nut. If you have a shop with a big vice, that will help, don’t tighten the unit too tight in the vice where you bend the housing out of round. Read those instructions you downloaded.
8. Delco-Remy alternator – has 5 terminals on the back. Hopefully you downloaded the installation instructions from the web site, the ones in the box are not the ones you need. However, the #6 Red wire goes to the BATT terminal; the #6 Black wire goes to the GROUND post on the side of the unit; the smaller RED wire goes to the load sense terminal; take the white wire and move it away from the alternator after it is installed, you won’t need it in the new one. The below picture shows the wires and how they are connected up to the new alternator. After I started up my rig, turning off the key would not shut it down, that is when I Realized I needed to remove the ignition (white) wire and put it aside-do not cut this wire out of the harness, tape it up, and then ty-wrap it out of the way. You may have to change this again someday, and the alternator you use then, may require that wire.
I just noticed something – in the picture with the other unit-LN, the red positive wire had started to rub a place in the hose in the foreground. I will need to check this hose. Route the wires so rubbing does not occur on any metal or rubber hoses. Also of note, I coated each end of the cables/wires/terminals with NO-OX-ID A Special grease, it keeps any corrosion from forming, and helps keep them protected from water which will splash up into this area.
9. You are now ready to re-attach the new unit to the alternator brackets. Attach the wires as shown in the instructions, #6 RED = BATT; #6 BLACK = GROUND-side of new unit; small red wire, load sense terminal. Use torque values from the instructions, or just good and tight without over tighten them. You will have to turn the DR unit pulley down, attach the wires, then turn pulley out and put it into the holding bracket. Once you have it in position, put the long bolt through the hole to keep the unit from falling down. Put the nut over the end of the long bolt and hand tighten until snug. Take the bottom bolt, and from the back side thread it into the bottom of the unit, you will need a wrench, as they put a heli-coil into the threads of that hole so the nut wont back out, they also put Lock tight in it as well, so once its tight, it won’t work itself out from vibration. Now tighten the nut on the top bolt –check torque, or just real tight again. Getting a torque wrench into these areas in my opinion would be hard to impossible, so use good judgement on getting nuts and bolts tight, I am going to check mine after the first day of travel to make sure-sort of like lug nuts on a new trailer.
10. Now if the alternator is in, the bolt are tight, move the coolant tank back and re-attach it to the frame member. Putting 2 - ½’ boards under it helps, the slots in the frame member allow the tank to move up or down a little, I keep mine up since I did not want it to rub on the frame member below the tank. Once it is in and the bolts tight, reattach the low coolant wire into its harness. Now you can ty-wrap back all the wires, and or hoses to the places they were before. When that is done, get the belt ready to reattach to the pulley. It will take a friend again; you can have them work the ratchet wrench in the idler pulley unit while you work the belt back over the alternator. It goes back the same way it came off. Make sure the belt is on all of the pulleys over the entire length of its travel. The idler pulley has a groove and the top is smooth, one pulley has a ridge to keep the belt from riding over the side, check its travel and make sure it is on correctly.
11. Now if the alternator is on, the belt is over the pulley’s and everything is ty-wrapped up, crawl under the passenger side of the engine, lay on your back, and low and behold, there are two places where a bunch of black wires attach to the side of the engine. Check both bolts and make sure they are tight, and none of the wires are frayed, coming out of the ring terminals or anything not as it should be. Now is the time to make sure those grounds are all good and tight. Fix any that are not up to snuff.
12. Re-attach the negative cables and tighten them down good. If you covered up the solar panels, you can uncover them, it is a good idea to use a good battery terminal spray to keep corrosion down. Look over the job one final time, looking for tools, or anything else that should not be in the machinery path. Push and tug on hoses, and wires to make sure nothing is lose or can get caught up in moving parts.
13. Turn on the master switches and start the coach. Have someone at the rear of the coach but well back of the engine look over the moving stuff, and looking for smoke, or any strange noise. Turn off the coach and make sure the engine stops running, if it does you are done, if it does not, and you did not attach the white wire, turn off the master switches this will stop the engine, then disconnect the negative battery terminal again. Now attach the white wire to the IGN Terminal on the alternator, reattach the negative battery cable, turn on the master switch and try it again, if the key turns off the engine you are really done. It’s possible you have the little red and white wires reversed, make sure that the #6 RED Wire is on the BATT terminal, just next to that one is where the little red wire should go, if it’s white, you have them reversed. If after all this, it still will not cut off - call Delco Remy and ask their tech support what is going on, you will need to stop the engine using the master switches again.
Here is what it looks like running!!!. It was not a hard job; you just had to do some figuring with using a different brand of alternator. If you stay with Leese Neville, then the wires go on just like the came off I think, but that is what printed instructions are for. In the picture the little green wire is part of the recall Cummins performed and is attached to a sensor on the side of the engine.
If you have any questions – send me a pm or en e-mail if you have my address. This was the last big thing I needed to do before we head out. Hopefully we will see all of you at Quartzsite, AZ for the rally.
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Monty & Janet - 2007 Alpine APEX 40 MDTS
S/N - 75715 - Enterprise ONE-RV Solutions
Master Certified RV Tech 
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