Oh the life of an alternator
I decided to swap in a maxima alternator, it's output is 90 amps as opposed to the Z's stock 70. This will give a little extra headroom since now I have a nice sound system and electric cooling fan. The problem arose in two things:
The housing of the Maxima alternator does not agree with the turbo cars tensioner, take a look.
So you have to grind away a little section of the tensioner in order to get it to work. Just grind a little under 1/4" off the inner part of the tensioner and the alternator will fit fine. For turbo cars
this is all you will need. Just attach the alternator, bolt it on, tension it up and call it good.
The Maxima and turbo Z's used a ribbed "serpentine" belt, while the N/A Z used a V belt (as turbo models used a serpentine belt, you don't need to worry about this part unless you have an N/A 300ZX and are putting on the maxima alternator) AS WELL AS the shaft on the Maxima alternator being bigger, and having an offset pulley. I fixed this by going to an alternator
shop in town; they found a correct spacer and pulley for me. You could also drill the hole on the stock alt pulley a little bigger, but you will still need the spacers. If you do have a selection of
pulleys to choose from, take a smaller one. This will provide your car with more amps at idle.
Other than that, it's a bolt on modification.
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