Recently Dumped a 1999 Ford Explorer 5.0 into the Bronco. Still don't have it running yet, but just got the harness from RJM finally. Looks awesome and the instructions are easy too.
The Alternator that came with the motor, can I use it? It has some sort of plug that goes into it with three prongs. It's made by motorcraft. Any ideas? Any at all would be a great help.
Thanks!!
Lots of us with Explorer conversions use that alternator. As long as it's working, it'll be fine. 130 amps. Get the mating connector; a 3G connector will work fine, you can find them on various Fords in junkyards- Tauruses likely being the most common.
Only 2 terminals actually do anything, the outer two. If you get a Taurus 3G connector it will have 3 wires, you can remove the middle one.
Connect the wire closest to the passenger fender to the green/red wire that used to go to your voltage regulator.
Connect the opposite wire to the positive battery terminal on your starter relay, but graft a short piece of 18 gage fusible link wire into that wire to protect it.
Using a 4 gage or heavier wire, connect the stud on the alternator to the positive battery terminal as well. Some people (myself included) put a large fuse (125 amps in my case) or a circuit breaker in this wire, in case of a voltage regulator runaway. Some argue that it isn't necessary.
Don't connect the charge wire that used to connect to your old alternator to anything- tape it off so it can't short out. You'll lose the ammeter function by doing that, but if you were to hook it up and the voltage regulator in the Explorer alternator (regulators are built in to nearly all modern alternators) were to go bad, you could get 200 amps+ going through that wire, and it would melt and possibly catch fire before you could do anything about it.
If you want, you can replace your ammeter with a voltmeter. Do a search here; several threads cover this mod. It's pretty simple.