Unless I haven't looked carefully enough, I still have yet to see someone say that they successfully put in a high output alternator into their Fit yet, so I thought I'd post progress of mine. One guy bought a 200A alt for their Fit but never ended up putting it in, successfully blue-balling all of us, but I'm actually gonna put mine in. Hopefully.

So I have a 2010 Honda Fit Sport and I just received my 200A H/O alt with external regulator from Tenney Alternators.

Somebody let me know if this has already been done/is old news/nobody cares anymore. I searched pretty extensively a few months ago for anyone that's successfully put one in, but found nothing. I haven't been here since then, though, so let me know if this issue has already been resolved and I'd be wasting my and your time by posting the progress of my install.

 

And I'm obviously a noob here, so if someone wants to tell me how to upload pictures, that'd be greeeeaaaaattt. The "insert image" option makes me put in a URL, so I uploaded the pictures to Imgur and linked there, but it didn't work.

 

I haven't seen any threads about this, i'm interested in how it turns out

Edit: I tried posting the pic too and the link didn't work, maybe something wrong on the other end?

 

I'm just gonna post links to Imgur. I don't know why it's not working.

imgur: the simple image sharer
imgur: the simple image sharer
imgur: the simple image sharer

Might as well state my sound system, for anybody who's wondering what I have/why I'm putting in this alt:

Up front:
>Stock alt
>C&D Dynasty ups12-100MR battery
>Big 3 upgrade (all 0-gauge wiring )

In back:
>1 Sprinter S12v370F battery
>1 Audioque 1200d amplifier
>2 Audioque HDC315 subwoofers

Voltage rests at 14.5, and I've experimented a bit with my voltage drop. I've let the batteries charge by not playing my system for a couple days, then went out on the highway so I was keeping the engine running at 2k+ rpms (From what I've read, this is when you'd get the least possible voltage drop), I'll play one of my hardest-hitting songs with a pretty constant bassline (not allowing a clipped signal), and my voltage will still drop down to the low 12s. 12.2 was the lowest I saw.

 

Only person I know who has been through this with his GE is Fit4Sp. Cou can see his build log here https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/2nd-...ml#post1162715

I think he was even selling the alt he had gotten for his setup...

 

Yeah that's who I was referring to; he never actually put it in.

 

Exactly, there was a reason why, I just cant recall... I would totally pick his brain as I know there are all kinds of issues with what is it, the ELD system or some such?

 

I spoke to him a while back and he just said that he didn't have the time to put it in...which seems like a crap excuse to me. But from what he told me, his voltage never went below 13, so maybe he just felt he didn't really need it.

 

Iirc, something about the ELD.

 

In my reading all the info. on fitfreak since 2006 concerning stereo installation and H/O alternators, this has never been accomplished.

I sincerely hope that your new high output alternator works as advertized. I am the fitfreak member who challenged the "stereo guru" who was trying to sell the Tenney product. His presentation in his ad sounded to me like a complete scam. That doesn't mean that it WAS a scam- it sounded that way.

First, he had not tried it. Second, he was selling at a "really cheap price". Third, he said that it is guaranteed to work in a Fit because it was sold with a "lifetime warranty". A warranty doesn't mean that it will work in a Fit.

So, the facts: Most manufacturers honor warranties with the original purchaser. If that purchaser sells the item, the manufacturer considers it to be used and will not honor the warranty with the second owner.

High output alternators have been discussed (why, oh why can't we get these for Fits?) ever since the first USDM Fit hit the streets. According to many other "stereo gurus", the max output of the alternator is limited by the ELD. That was accepted as fact. So, all of a sudden, it is not true? A miracle happened?

The original ad sounded so fishy, just like late night infomercials for hair growth pills and "male enhancements", I had to challenge the seller and do not regret doing so.

If you are successful and this thing goes in without problems and works well enough to justify the price and the effort, I will be very happy to see that posted in the forums. That still doesn't get around the warranty issue concerning a SECOND buyer (concerning the ad, not your own purchase).

The ad guy's attitude of "Who the hell are you? I've been doing this kind of work for years. I know what I am doing! Tenney makes great quality stuff and it has a lifetime warranty!" just made this sound "too good to be true" and very likely NOT TRUE. The fact that he is such an expert but didn't even try to install the thing to verify that it actually works in a Fit was the main reason for my objection to his ad. I don't regret my posts at all.

So, I am subscribed to your thread hoping to see good news for Fit owners who need higher alternator output. If yours works, then maybe he can sell his.

 

I'm glad I don't need any kind of hair growth or mail enhancement products...

 

I'm really glad that you don't need those things too------

 

Alright guys, just posting a quick update. I don't have time at the moment to post pics or throw the video together, but I'll try and get to it tonight.

The alternator is in and it works great. However, Tenney failed to mention that I would need a bigger belt; the one that came with the stock alt ended up being too short, so that would've been nice to know beforehand.

I'm also getting a rattling noise whenever I'm idle, so I'm not sure what that's about. We had to jack up the engine in order to get to certain areas, so maybe something came loose in the process....we also dropped a couple nuts/washers that we never found, so they might be lodged somewhere. I don't know. But it goes away once I accelerate, and aside from it being annoying, it doesn't seem to be affecting the performance of the car, nor is it coming from the alternator.

Voltage has never been better. Did a before/after test of the same song, and before my voltage would get down to 12.9 and, at the brief break in the bassline of the song, it would come back up to the high 13s. But now, my voltage doesn't go below 13.5, and at the bassline break it jumps back up to around 14.3-14.5, so it's definitely an improvement.

I'll get to the pictures and video asap. I'm a busy lad though.

 

posting img like this?

you need the embed for BBcode

 

Ah there we go, thank you Goobers.

Alriiiiight, onward to the installation:

 

So first things first, in order to make the alternator more accessible, we removed the fan and the windshield wiper fluid. Here's a before/after of how much room it gave us (Fan/fluid are highlighted in red)

 

The bolt on the bottom of the alternator proved kind of problematic, which is why we removed the fan and the windshield fluid.


Disconnecting everything else from the alternator was simple, but the belt was what gave us the most problems. What we had to do was pull up on the pulley that I've highlighted in this next picture (we did it by wrapping some 4-gauge wire around it), then slip the belt off. You might have to zoom in to see where I highlighted

 

Except that's the radiator coolant overflow reservoir... WW fluid is on the passenger side.

 

After finally getting the belt off, we just had to take the alt out, which proved more difficult than expected. The two rubber hoses that the red arrows are pointing two were definitely in the way on both sides, but we eventually ended up being able to squeeze it through the right (along the path of the green arrow), under the rightmost hose, then up through where the fan used to be.


Here are just a couple of pictures of the H/O alt next to the stock alt. The stock one is, obviously, the one without the wire coming out of it.



To put the Tenney alt in, we actually went the other way, which was a lot easier. I'm not sure if we did something differently or what, but we couldn't seem to take the stock one out that way. But anyway, we went under the leftmost hose, as indicated by the green arrow, and set it into place.


The bolt that came out of the bottom part of the stock alternator won't fit in the new one, so you have to get a bigger one. My buddy did this part while I was back working on my batteries, so I didn't see how the big the one he got was, so I apologize for the lack of specificity. He told me that he also put a middle piece in (the part highlighted in red). I'm not sure why. It doesn't seem necessary to me, but if anyone's dying to know why, I'll ask him. Also, the bigger alternator made it so there was very little space between the end of the bolt and the thing the belt goes on (area circled in green), so we had very little space to put a nut on the end of it.


Next, we started working on getting the belt back on. It turns out that we needed to get a longer belt, so the process we went through trying to get the stock belt back on might've been unnecessary, but it might've ended up helping anyway. The original belt was 45.5 inches, and the one we ended up putting on was 46 5/8 inches. Although we still really struggled to get that one one and just barely got it, so we felt that one more size up would've been more ideal.

In order to make the entire belt process easier, we jacked up the engine a little bit and removed the motor mount (circled in green) to get better leverage on the pulley in order to put the belt back on.


After we finally got the belt on, we put the two wires (circled in red) back on.


But not the one I'm holding up with my finger in this next picture, but I'll get to that.


Now, after we put the fan, motor mount, and windshield wiper fluid back in, we just had to worry about the external regulator.

What we had to do was get three different-colored wires, as pictured here:


Then we connected the 'L' (blue wire) to the wire hanging out of the alternator.


Then the 'A' (red wire) to the fuse block on my starter battery:


Then we fed the 'S' (yellow wire) through to the front of the car, to the driver's side kick panel. This first picture also shows where we had to end up mounting the regulator:




We then tied in the yellow wire to my volt meter. The yellow, black and red wires on the right are my volt meter wires, and we just tapped the yellow wire from the regulator into the yellow volt meter wire (It's a basic stinger volt meter)


So that was pretty much it. I made video of the installation as well, but I haven't gone through what I actually have yet, so it might be pretty half-assed. But I hope that helped.

Only negative things I have to say about this whole ordeal:
>Tenney didn't tell me I'd need a longer bottom bolt for the alternator, nor did they tell me I would need a bigger belt.
>I now have a rattling noise somewhere up front when I'm coasting in reverse or drive, but not when I'm parked or driving. I'm pretty certain it's not coming from the alternator though; I think it was user error from the installation. Perhaps from jacked up the engine. If I figure it out, I'll post an update.

All in all, aside from the occasional annoying rattling noise, I'm thrilled with how much better my electrical system is.

 

Actually when I had mine from Tenney I could not get it to mount because of the lower bolt housing not being threaded, the bolt sticking out was (at least on my fit) touching the pully just on the other side of the alternator. So I returned it to Tenney, and from the looks of it he sent you the exact alternator that he sent me. I am glad to see you got it in, but for now I do not see the need for one. After I have done my complete battery system upgrade which will be finished this coming week I will have 3 brand new XS Power D5100s in the car with 2 full runs of 0awg OFC, and the only time I see REAL voltage drop (below 12volts) is when I play below tuning (35Hz) and it's cranked so for daily driving what I will have after my upgrades this week I will be fine. Also remember I am running a 4500.1 amp VS your 1200d amp.