2001 TOYOTA RAV4: Alternator
On the way to dropping off S at school this past Friday morning, the battery light came on the dash. Crap. Now granted, our trusty little RAV4 has just shy of 200k miles and has never given us a single problem. Yes, we've done some maintenance on it but that's it.
Knowing the battery is only two years old and, well, the alternator is the original Toyota part, I assumed I'd be replacing it. Sure enough. A quick voltage test with the engine off: 12.87V. The battery was still good. With the engine running: 11.83V. It should be 14+ volts so clearly the alternator wasn't putting out enough charge, causing the dash light to kick on.
That was Friday morning. Saturday afternoon Scott (who was visiting for S's birthday) and I ran to AutoZone to pick up a new one (remanufactured, actually) along with a serpentine belt. Since I'd be messing with it to get the alternator replaced and this little beast has almost two hundred thousand miles I figured I'd just snap on a new belt.
The job was quite possibly the easiest one I've ever done on any vehicle. It only used a smattering of tools:
- Sockets: 19mm (pulley tensioner bolt pulled clockwise to loosen the belt), 14mm and 12mm (alternator mounting bolts), 10mm and 8mm (electrical and battery connections)
- 18"-long 3/8" breaker bar (for the pulley tensioner)
- 3/8" and 1/4" socket wrenches with various extensions
- Flathead screwdriver/needle nose pliers to help pop off the electrical connectors
Granted, the alternator was front and center. Well, technically front and off-to-the-right-side but that doesn't have the same connotation. It was easy to get at for sure. In five minutes or so it was out and I was comparing it with the new one.
Yep, they looked the same. The only issue we had with the new part was with the aluminum threads in the captive nut that held the bigger 14mm bolt. The factory bolt didn't thread into them. Playing it safe, we ran back to AutoZone where we had the guy crank the bolt through the threads. We figured if he damaged them he'd give us another alternator. It worked and we were good to go.
Another five minutes and the new one was installed.
The serpentine belt was also super-simple but required us to jack up the car and remove the right-side wheel along with the plastic covering inside the wheel well. That gave us plenty of access to re-thread the belt which also, yep, took about five minutes.
Here's the diagram for how to thread the belt:
After double- and triple-checking it was A) threaded correctly and B) not going to slip (I spun the crankshaft clockwise with the 19mm socket and breaker bar combo to move the belt a few rotations to test) we were all set. Time to start her up.
Boom. All good. 14.2V at the battery and the belt was spinning happily.
All-in-all it maybe took an hour. We figured that was a $500-700 job if we had taken it into a shop. There you go, Luna. Enjoy!
Worth noting: we noticed a low idle so K Googled it. Seems like it could be due to the computer restarting and the engine needing to idle a while to reset it. Here's a Toyota forum that talks about this issue.
