Don't buy a Chain store rebuilt alternator either
Look around at what Napa offers and ASK questions about their warranty. I'm on my 3rd AZone alternator.. and (after tonight) possibly I'll be in for a 4th in the future.
Let me repeat: I have installed 3 different alternators from AZone within 3 months. That frankly sucks... it sucks big.. what sucks more is that when these P'sOS go out, they won't just break and be done with it, they fail gradually and when bench tested, show as good!
Now, back to my latest woe. I left my lights on today and had to get a jump start when leaving the office. With the rebuilt P'sOS, this a VERY BAD thing to do. They state "Ford internally regulated alternators must be installed with a fully charged battery. The alternator is NOT designed to recharge a weak or defective battery and will (paraphased) cause the alternator to overwork and thus shorten its life blah blah blah!!!"
Hello!! Isn't that what an alternator is supposed to do?? Hello!!
This is rather of course, a BS excuse for why their cheap, made in ethiopia, regulators blow beets.
If you must install it with a fully charged battery, then by deduction, you also cannot operate the alternator without a fully charged battery.
That means no jump starts. I can't recall anything in my owners manual stating never to jump start the car, and also never to leave your lights on. So, this means that either Ford is stupid and didn't tell us about the problem OR.... the rebuilder is blowing smoke to cover up their boneheaded bulk buy of a load of defective regulators.
The OEM unit is rated at 110 Amps! Yes, thats one hundred and ten of them. I don't know if you know this but a battery 2 volts under charging voltage will not draw anywhere near that. _IF_ it were putting out 110A into the battery, then I wouldn't stand anywhere near a battery with that much fast juice going into it. The stupid thing would probably blow up.
If you take them at their word (guess you should if you want the POS to live for any period of time), them if your battery ever dies, you should remove it from whereever it is, charge it back up, reinstall it, and then start the car. Great idea if it died on the side of a highway somewhere huh?
OK, so I jumped it anyways, drove home for 1/2hr and am finishing charging it with a charger. Even with the 30 minutes of alternator charging, most of the cells were less than 1/4 charged. 110A my A**.