So home we went and made it back ok.Will confess that in the late 70's and early 80's worked for 3 different alternator rebuilding shops. The first one was done assembly line style at at ripe young age of 19 was building and testing over 100 alternators a day. The second shop was in Florida and we rebuilt them one by one there. But have never saw or rebuilt one of these Military 24 Volt Leece-Neville's at either shop. With these alternators now costing over $600 it was getting repaired.
Found the seals on the bearings leaking grease and both bearings bad. Fortunately, caught it before the rotor made contact with the stator and wrecked both. Interesting to find the military alternator also has additional teflon seals to keep dirt and water out of the bearings.
Front bearing was easy to find, purchased from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/TIMKEN-20x52x15m ... ial&sr=1-3
Note the new front seal in the pulley side flange.
The rear bearing that has needle bearings was another story.
Could not cross over the number on the bearing to anything available. Worse yet, could not get the the bearing out of the case. There is a space behind the bearing to insert a blind bearing puller, and it was failing to remove it. Ironically , one of the alternator shops I worked for all those years ago is still in business. So grabbed the alternator and headed over there. They had no luck removing the bearing either and had no luck crossing over the bearing in their catalogs. Was informed the military alternators are a "Different Beast" and normal sources for parts do not support them. They had actually told me to give up and install something different and modern. But that is not how I roll, lol
Learned lots doing searches and making phone calls. If we go by the military part number on the alternator it is no help. That alternator was built by several different manufactures over the years, and there are actually several different models of the Leece-Neville I have. Finally made contact with https://southernautomotive.com/catalog/ ... 472430d3bb
Their web page did not show the model of alternator I had but gave them a call anyway. Spoke to Tom Tyson and after asking me for a bunch of numbers (and not the military ones) he was able to determine which model I had.
He sent me a pdf of the alternator with a parts list.
They have a store on ebay and sent me links to the parts I required.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/201290826960?h ... Swqu9U5JJR
https://www.ebay.com/itm/311900815914?e ... SwXetZSnpB
https://www.ebay.com/itm/203301287032?h ... SwQoxdSEHF
So with parts on the way, back to removing the rear bearing. Tried heating the case up with a heat gun and using the blind bearing puller with slide hammer and penetrating oil, got no where. Expected this as the alternator shop warned me of this scenario. Tried punching the bearing out from the stator side but all that did was shatter the case of the bearing housing and shoot little needle bearings all over the place. So was now left with only the shell of the bearing case in the housing.
Tried a hacksaw and a Sawzall, all that did was scratch the hardened case of the bearing shell. So out came the Dremel with a cut off wheel. Had to angle the cutter wheel and could only make about 20 degree cross cuts from both sides, then punched it out. This is what was left of it. It was a miracle to break only one cutting disk.
This photo shows the new rear bearing at the bottom and the 2 seals above it. The teflon seals are not very pliable and do not want to go over the rotor shaft. They need to be pre stretched by prying the lip of the seals upward to increase the diameter. This photo shows the seals before stretching.
Even though I ordered new brushes, after cleaning up the grease on the old ones they were reused. Found a stripped screw that was loose on the terminal strip and a couple of the push on connectors from the regulator were loose. Amazing it was still generating ok before. The TM's that can be found on this site go over how to test the internal components, so will not repeat that here.
Hope this helps someone, because even if you find a shop to service the alternator the shipping back and forth will cost more than the parts to repair it yourself. Happy to report after a 60 mile ride in the woods yesterday the alternator was quiet and performed admirably.
