MobiWeld Alternator Install

It seems the alternator wasn't working quite right after the body swap, so I decided to go with a more popular manufacturer with the plan of an on-board welder in my distant future.  I looked around, and MobiWeld offers their alternators at a lower price than other on-board welder companies, and the alternator is a Bosch - off the shelf parts.  After doing all these modifications to my Jeep, I'm getting hooked on 'easy and repairable', which this alternator promises to be.  As you can see from the pictures, the new alternator(right) is quite a bit larger than my old, no-name alternator(left) which claimed to have a very substantial output.  The fan on the older unit was very much smaller, as you can also see.  The MobiWeld alternator is Delta wound to have a higher output, but it is supposed to have a lower voltage at idle.  For this reason, a smaller pulley is included so it'll spin faster.  The alternator comes with all the wiring necessary to add a welder and DC outlet later.

The first thing I noticed during the installation was that the lower bracket was too long.  I attribute this to my horrible collection of Frankenstein brackets.  For this reason, I didn't really document the grinding of the bracket, but it can be seen in one of the last pictures.  It's a cylindrical spacer that goes between the lower mount of the alternator and the head.  I shortened the cylinder by putting a hose clamp on it and scribing a line in it so I knew how far to grind to.  I wanted to make sure I ground it flat.

One of the other modifications that I had to make to the alternator was to the stud where the B+ mounts.  When I got the alternator installed, the stud came precariously close to the head and valve cover.  I understand that the alternator doesn't really move in relation to the head under normal use, but I wasn't comfortable with it how it was:

Before:	After:

The next modification was because my cables are larger than stock or what's commonly available.  I have 1/0 cable from The Mechanical Man, and it didn't fit in between the channels in the black plastic piece by the stud.  There was a small triangle between two of the channels, so I figured I could remove that and the cable would fit.  To remove it, I tried to cut it off with some cutters, but it didn't cut off completely.  I used a die grinder to get rid of the rest, and the cable fit fine.  I tried to make sure all of my modifications did not actually occur to the case, that way I could return it if I needed to, and not affect it too badly.

Finally, after the alternator was physically installed, I had to hook up the wiring.  I unfortunately had forgotten what Scott had told me about which wire to hook up to key on positive.  On Saturday morning, I called MobiWeld and left a message on their answering service.  This paged Scott, and I got a call back on Sunday (SUNDAY!) while Scott was coming back from vacation from Hawaii.  I asked which wire was the exciter wire, (yellow/green) and also if I can hookup a light inline as a charge light, and he talked a little about if it would work or not.  I haven't tried it yet, but after hooking up the exciter wire to 12 volts, the battery voltage read over 14 volts!