How to replace the alternator on a 2003 Saturn Vue

My wife called me while on her way in to work yesterday to tell me her charge light was on. I figured it was just the battery going out on the car since it is about 8 years old now, but even if it was the alternator I knew she’d make it into work. I told her to I’d be up there later to check it out.

When I got there at about 10:00 I was expecting nothing more than just replacing the battery, so I took her car to Po Boys and had them run a check on the electrical system. The outcome was not so good. The alternator was totally shot. The cost of replacing it was going to be about $450 parts and labor ($250 for the alternator and $200 for the work). Well, I’m pretty broke, and I’m pretty handy with a set of wrenches, so I told my wife I’d put a new one on for her. So I called around and got a better price for an alternator (slightly under $200), went and picked it up, and got to work.

Now, I’m not used to working on newer vehicles. The only vehicle I’ve worked on in the last decade was my old Jeep, a 1987 YJ with a 258 inline-six… easy! Everything is right there for you to get to in an engine bay that could fit two of them in it. So I was a bit apprehensive about doing this job, but to save a few hundred bucks I was dead set on doing it.

It only took he 2 hours to get the job done, and that was with me working on the Vue in the parking lot of where she worked, without the proper tools, and taking a break for lunch. I decided to log what I did here so that if anyone else has to go through that they will be able to find a decent write-up of what is involved. It was actually pretty easy to do, just time consuming and awkward.

Here is how to replace an alternator on a 2003 Saturn Vue with a V6.
First thing to note is that the alternator is under the engine on the passengers side. You will be better off removing the tire so that you have room to work. Disconnect the negative battery cable, jack up the passengers side, chock the rear tires, pull the tire off, and take a look, you’ll be able to find the alternator pretty easily.

In order to gain access to the battery cables you’ll need to remove the battery cover, there are 3 Phillip’s head screws to undo and then the cover pulls right off. Once the cover is off take a 6mm wrench and undo the negative battery cable.
After you get the tire off you’ll have to remove the black plastic splash guard. It is attached with 6 or 7 plastic trim pins, which are easy to take out with a flat head screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers. Just pull the center pin out of the lock washer-pin and set them aside.
With the splash guard removed it is easy to see and maneuver around under there. You’ll need to locate the serpentine tensioner pulley, put a 15mm wrench on it, and crank it towards the firewall to lower the pulley. What that does is add slack to the belt so that you can pull the belt off the alternator pulley. It’s probably best to have someone do that from the top of the engine bay while you slip the belt from underneath, but it can be done alone from underneath if you have a long enough wrench.
Once the belt is slipped off the alternator pulley it’s time to disconnect the electrical connectors from the alternator. The main pigtail pulls out but will require you to bend back a tab to get it to pull. The tab is on the backside of the pigtail connector (where you can’t see it) you I had to use a small flat head screwdriver to bend the tab back while I pulled it. Then use a 10mm wrench to disconnect the nut from the ground wire and you are ready to remove the alternator bolts.
I used a 5/8 socket on a 3/8″ drive ratchet to remove the two alternator bolts. It’ll take a while to do since you can’t really get a lot of movement on the ratchet with all the stuff in the way. After a while though the bolts will come out and you’ll have to pry the alternator off the mounting area of the engine block.
Once the alternator is out, use a wire brush to clean the mounting area of the block and the threads to the mounting bolts, then reinstall the alternator just the opposite way you took it off. And that is all there is to it.

Like I said, it took me a total of 2 hours to figure it out, take a lunch break, and go from the moment of the car pulling into the work area until I handed my wife the keys when I was done.

Susan G. Koman 3-Day for the Cure

It looks like my wife was finally able to get sponsorship to participate in the Susan G. Koman 3-Day for the Cure walk. For anyone who has been living under a rock, which is fine if you enjoy sub-rock living, it is a 3 day walk (60 miles) to raise money and awareness for finding a cure to breast cancer.

My wife has been wanting to do this walk for years now, but finances just wouldn’t allow it. Looks like this year will be different though, she was finally able to get $2300 in sponsorship money to participate. And here’s the fun part, I get to be her trainer!! I’ve been walking religiously since around Christmas time of last year, even going so far as to leave my visiting family in my house for an hour or so while I strolling around the neighborhood. So needless-to-say, hoofing it for 5 miles at a time isn’t that big of a deal for me. I wish I could go on longer walks but don’t want to be away from the house that long of a morning, leaving my poor wife alone with our little terror of a child.

So this is going to be fun. I get to go walking more and more and my wife gets the training she’ll need to be ready for the charity walk in the middle of August. I’m hoping that at least one day before the charity walk that we get to do a complete 20 mile walk in one day, but we’ll see how that goes.

Watching Robins build a nest.

I’m sitting here on my front porch enjoying the late morning breeze, watching birds play in the bird bath, cars pass, and my new neighbors down the street try to figure out how to operate a Bobcat loader they rented to move about 5 yards of topsoil.
As I’m watching the robins I realize what they are doing. It’s a nesting pair, and they are building a home for their eggs for next spring. They both keep flying into my next-door neighbors’ yard waste bin, puling out mouthfuls of grass clippings, dipping them into our birdbath to get them wet, and then flying into one of his shrubs to assemble their nest.
It’s nice to be able to sit out here and enjoy things like this, and I’ll definitely miss these times when I go back to work.

Swiffer SweeperVac Review

I thought I’d do my first review on something I use a lot, the Swiffer SweeperVac.

Going from working 50 to 60 hours a week to spending all day at home leaves me wanting to do something, anything! My wife is always getting on me for doing the things she wants to do, like gardening, landscaping, painting… I’m still not allowed to weed her flower beds. So I clean the house, constantly. And having a little boy that I so loving nickname “Hurricane” (because everywhere he goes, it looks like a hurricane blew through) makes cleaning the perfect job to keep me busy all day. Then add on top of that the fact that we have wall-to-wall hard wood floors and 2 cats, and you can imagine how dirty the floors can become if unattended to.

I love this thing. It has the power to suck up cat hair, unpopped popcorn kernels, wood ash from the fireplace, stray grains of cat litter, and even the rare maple tree seed that gets tracked inside. The sweeping pad holds on to the grime as the vacuum part pulls everything else in. The only thing I have found so far that it has trouble with is pine needles from our Christmas tree, but that’s just a seasonal thing, unless you like having a live Christmas tree in your house year ’round.

I keep it hooked to the charger and sitting in a hidden corner nook in a dining room so that it is easily accessible. It holds plenty enough of a charge to vacuum our 1300 sq/ft home and not lose any power, and considering it’s a few years old I think that’s pretty darned good.

Old friends.

I was bored today, more bored than usual. After counting my fingers and toes for a few hours I started web surfing and ended up on facebook. I have a personal facebook profile, to an extent. I never log in, never post updates, and never look up old friends. So I decided to see who I could find on there. After 20 minutes of staring at the screen I realized I could not remember a single name of a person I went to high school with. I did however, find a “Class of” profile for my graduation year. Great! I’ll scroll through there and see who I recognize.

No one, not a single person lit that little light bulb that floats above my noggin. I even went so far as to check out each of their profiles, looking at their pictures, reading their wall posts, looking through their friends… nothing. How could I have spent 4 years of my life with these people and not remember a single one of them? I know I have memory issues, I always have, it comes with the territory of having a neurological syndrome, mixing fantasy with reality and all that. But still, I should have at least been able to recognize at least one of the almost 200 people who’s profiles I went through.

I’m going to start writing reviews.

Everyone has their opinion on things, and I’m no different. With all this free time on my hands I have plenty of time to blog, but nothing to really blog about. Who really wants to read about me washing the mud off my gardening shoes? Yeah, thought so. So after talking to my wife I have decided to start writing reviews. I have an opinion, and I’m going to share it!

Daddy, I’m a shark!

My son is sitting here watching Shark Boy and Lava Girl (I think it’s the first time he has seen it) while I am folding the laundry. He comes up to me with his mouth opened and pointing at his teeth. “Daddy, I’m turning into a shark, see my shark teeth?” I had no idea what he was talking about at first, then it hit me and I started laughing. That’s when he threatened to bit me.

So here I am, surviving my very first “shark attack”.