How do you replace the alternator on a 1987 Honda Accord?

Answer 1

I just switched out my alternator in the Autozone parking lot. I keep it classy. I pulled it out from along the firewall on the passenger's side. I have an 86 Accord but I imagine it works on 88 and 89 as well.

MARK THE POSITION OF YOUR ALTERNATOR ON THE MOUNT BEFORE YOU REMOVE IT!!! This makes it easy to reinstall the belt to the right tension.

It's pretty easy, put the car up on jack stands (I just drove my front driver's side wheel up onto the curb), DISCONNECT YOUR BATTERY, remove your 12mm bolts on the top of the alternator and the 14mm on the bottom. Remove the green wire plugin, pop the alternator out of its space and turn it so that you can remove the pos wire 10mm nut with a socket and a couple extensions on it. If you have the strange mount that uses a difficultly placed 12mm nut to tension the belt, use a 12mm stubby box wrench from below (reaching up past the cv axle) to loosen it. I couldn't figure out another way.

Now from passenger's side panel, look down the firewall midway and you'll see where the heater hoses go in. Just before that you'll see a blend/mixer mounted of the firewall. Remove that one 10mm bolt holding it down. Now you can pull the alternator out from underneath those hoses by carefully lifting up on them. I found it came out easiest with the pulley side towards the motor.

Put the new alternator in the reverse. Tension the belt to the marks you put on the mount and tighten her up. If you forgot to mark the belt or put a new one on, the alternator belt needs 1/4 inch of travel. Meaning if you push on it from below in between the alternator pulley and the crankshaft pulley, it should depress no more then 1/4 of an inch.

Now thank your lucky stars for whoever discovered this trick rather then pulling the cv axle.

I performed this operation about a year ago. I bought the Haines repair manual and went by those directions. The driver's side axle (left side in the USA) has to be disconnected from the transmission to create a clear access path to drop the alternator through. There is no other way to remove it. Note: The inner axle end only needs moving far enough to get the alternator past. The axle is very difficult to remove completely from the vehicle, so I left the outer end in the hub and the inner axle end held up with wire to prevent damage to the cv joint or rubber boot.

i just took the top driver side motor mount off and used a floor jack and jacked the motor up far enough to slip the altinator out it wasnt easy but a lot better than pulling and axle

I just changed the alternator on my 1986 Honda Accord (carborated). I did not need to remove the axle like everyone says. Once the old one is disconnected, it can slip along the firewal on it can be pulled out on the passenger side once it is free of the speedometer cable. I did have to remove one bolt. My buddy says it was for a heat selector valve. Once that was out of the way, it slipped out and put the old one in. It really helped to have a second person though. The total repair time was about two hours. It was my first alternator change and a pleasant experience.

If its fuel injected you can remove the air cleaner housing and remove it from the top, if its carbureted you must remove the left axle. But if you are careful , you can unbolt the alternator then pry the axle forward just a little bit so you dont have to remove the axle

On an 87 Accord with manual transmission (with carb.). You can remove the alternator by removing the hoses from the heater core on the firewall,remove the bolt that fastens the heat selector valve assemby to the firewall, pull the hoses and the assmbly out of your way, remove the air filter assembly from the carb. The alternator can then be worked out along the firewall on the passenger(right) side of the car. This is much easier than removing the drive axle. I don't know if this will work with automatic trans.

On an 86 Accord with automatic transmission, we just unbolted the alternator then worked it along the firewall, over to the passenger side of the engine. In order to do this we had to remove one bolt that holds the lower hose to heater core selecter. Then pull the hoses off and it came right out. It goes in the same way and we just had to replace the hoses we romoved because we had to cut them off. Very easy job and the hoses are not expensive. Taking the drive shaft off is bull crap. Its like a whole nother project and I would not recommend attempting to remove the drive shaft unless you absolutely have to. Came out beautiful!

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The same thing can be accomplished on the 87 accord auto trans without removing the transaxle but you will have to remove the brake master cylinder. The alternator can be squeezed out the top this way but the bracket can not be attached to it or it will not fit through. There are also a few minor hoses and lines that will have to be undone and moved out of the way. The car I have is the LXI hatchback with a 12 valve engine that is super wide. On this car the around the back method would not work and removing the air cleaner still did not buy enough room because the manifold and the FI were in the way. Removing the master cylinder seemed a better option to me because I did not know how, or want to mess with the axle. This is a bad option however if you don't know how to bleed brakes.