I have a 1996 Disco 1 that I've owned for about 2 years now. The alternator went out the other day and so I headed to my local salvage yard and picked up, what I thought was a sweet find.



Only a year old?!

So I slap this bad mama-jamma in and its fine for a day or so but then I start noticing a strange noise. With the engine running, I opened the hood and could tell the noise was coming from the alternator and could feel that it was vibrating.
I am someone who would rather fix, than replace, so I decide to tear it down and see if I can repair it. I was able to replace the rear bearing and the alternator is fully functional again. I suppose I wanted to share this because I thought you all might find it interesting and hopefully I can teach someone something new.
Here are the pics.



First, remove the four 9mm bolts that hold this cover on. They are located around the outside of the cover.



Here is what is underneath. If you have never done this before; do not be intimidated, just go slow and take pictures.



First, I put a small finishing nail (anything small will work, even a toothpick) in this slot to hold the brushes back away from the main shaft.



Notice that there are two brushes and they both have holes in them. These brushes are spring loaded and the holes line up with the hole at the top; when they are pressed inwards.



here you can see the nail in place. You can do this step after you remove the contact assembly, but I did it before removing to avoid any damage to the brushes.



Here is a view of the brushes with the contact assembly removed from the alternator.



Now grab your soldering iron and un-solder these large wires. You have to do this in order to split the cases. I am not sure if you have to do this step for all types of alternators but for the alternator that comes on the discovery 1, you do.



Once you have the cover off you can access the bearing. There is one in the front also, but I could tell from feel that this one needed replacing. I just pressed it out with a brass drift , and installed a new one that I picked up at a local alternator and starter repair shop. It is just a sealed bearing, I could have probably picked one up at Home Depot or some place like that.



in this photo I am attempting to show that the stater was rubbing on the windings. ( sorry if my terminology is incorrect, I am not an expert on alternators, in fact this was my first time taking one apart.) So now you just put everything back in the reverse order and make sure you get plenty of solder on those wires.



Good as new! I hope you enjoyed this post.

 

Cheers!
I hope it's that easy doing this for my Disco 2's alternator bearing.

 

Yep, same process. Also a good time to replace the voltage regulator while you're in there.
> http://store.alternatorparts.com/jn2...-assembly.aspx