chaseincats

Yep!

Yeah, I finally had enough too. Even though I used my friend's fog machine, it is definitely worth the price of admission to buy one for this project. All your local Z friends will be happy to come over and do their cars too I bet haha.

Yep!

Yeah, the PO made a poor connection that was hiding under a bunch of electrical tape

Final update: We fogged the car like in that video again last weekend and confirmed sealing the taillight gaskets with Seal 'N Peel (one bead between the gasket and the light housing and a second between the gasket and body) worked perfectly - no smoke escapes there anymore. That said it didn't 100% fix the issue meaning there were leaks else where which we found due to a shotty weld job done by the PO when replacing the hatch base which must have been rusty. Fogging: - I saw this originally on another thread which I cant find but besides what we did (throwing the fog machine in the car and shutting the door) there's actually a better way to do it. - Once the car is fully pressurized with the fog machine, the smoke will escape from the paths of least resistance, which isn't the tiny pinholes in the back. The trick is to have someone hold the smoke machine behind the car and move it around while you turn on a shop vac and let it sit in the hatch area creating a vacuum (just like how the car works while driving). You will see where the smoke is sneaking in then just wipe some seal 'n peel or whatever sealant you have left and its game over. You'd be surprised where smoke sneaks in, for example, smoke was sneaking in AROUND one of the rivets I found. This is definitely worth your time to do at least in my opinion.

I completely forgot to update you on this, sorry about that. Wiggling it worked and I haven't had an issue since. What a waste of time changing all those alternators out ended up being lol. Thanks Captain

Correct, you need to modify the box to get it to fit. The general consensus is (this is what I did) getting some literal tin snips and cutting away the metal until you can fit it in. Don't be discouraged by this, it's absolutely worth the effort.

Haha sounds good, I'll wiggle away!

Gotcha. I took it for a drive today and it was behaving, next time it misbehaves I will.

By 'jumper' you mean take an ohm measurement with a multimeter, not stick a wire between the two, right? (please say ohm measurement)

All my measurements are on post #23

The W/R wire that goes to the alternator’s T-connector isn’t included in this check, right? Good catch on the tape flap, I grabbed another shot after giving it a haircut. It does go back into the harness:

Gotcha, it's just odd that it fixes itself everytime I change the alternator out. But I'll give that a look today.

Thanks all, good to know. Before I jump ship on this alternator though, I do want to find the possible issue with my wiring harness

From the pic on the rockauto part page it looks like I'd need to yank the fan off of my current alternator and transfer it to the new one somehow, no?

Could you send me where you got the alternator/2-pin connector? I'd like to keep working on getting the current one working properly since the theory so far is my car's wiring is the issue but that sounds like an upgrade I'd like to make later on

Did you need to do any hardware modifications to the alternator housing or mounting brackets? I know most non-Z alternators need that which I'd like to avoid if possible.

The wire colors differ from my 78 FSM which is interesting but it looks like @Captain Obvious's is more on point. I've attached a picture of my alternator's wiring (I unplugged the T connector for a better view of the wire colors). E: Black wire B: White with red stripe wires (condenser's WR has been connected to the terminal via a ring terminal instead of the original bullet connector) S: White with red stripe L: Blue with white stripe that becomes blue with black stripe after the electrical tape I think (the wires are dirty so it's hard to see)

Since this car is a '78 it is the only 1st gen year that doesn't have an external regulator and uses what became the ZX alternator

I took a look at the FSM just now and it appears that the W/R bullet connector that isn't connected is for the condenser but on remans these days, the condenser is pre-connected to the alternator's B-post using a ring terminal instead of an external bullet connector so it just dangles

Gotcha, so I just took a reading from the alternator body to the small r/w wire which is a bullet connector that isn't connected. I never connected this and just assumed it was a remnant of the 77 and back cars that were externally regulated. Anyway, the voltage from that wire to the alternator body is identical to the battery 12.25v The other w/r wire looks to be a ring terminal and is also sitting at 12.25v

Sorry for the lack of response, all - I've been out of town and just got back. When measuring the sense line to ground (I'll use the negative battery terminal), does the car have to be off, in accessory mode, or running? @Zed Head I don't believe O'Reilly's tests the alternators they get from their reman folks but I could be wrong.

I haven’t, how would I do that?

No but the problem is always fixed after the swap which is why I think it’s always the alternator

To use the frontier alternator you need to do the wiring mods you noted though, right?