I really don't want have a lockwasher on the bolt that holds the pulley on my alternator shaft. It was cramping my style. So I put a regular washer on instead and tightened it well. But now I'm worried that because there isn't a lockwasher on there, the pulley might come off when I'm on the highway and throw the belt and itl be a huge crazy mess. So does anyone out there have just a regular washer on their alternator pulley, and I don't have anything to worry about? Thanks for any thoughts.

 

I can't think of a really good reason not to put the lockwasher back on, but in the interest of not cramping your style I'd suggest using some thread locker (like Loc-Tite red) to make sure the nut doesn't back off. If that happens it will be a lot more than your style that gets cramped.

 

Hey- Thanks for the reply. I've never used Lock-Tite before, though I've heard of it from time to time. What exactly is that? Glue?

And just FYI, What happened was I put in a new alternator, and then attached the pulley to it (in that order). There would be no way to get an impact drill in there to tighten it enough with a lockwasher on so that the force of the nut is evenly distributed against the pulley. The only way to really tighten it with my hand wrench that I know of would be to jam a screwdriver into the innards of the alternator so that it doesn't turn while I tighten the nut. That, of course would likely break the alternator.

 

No sweat. LocTite is the brand name, I guess the generic name would be thread lock. There are two versions that I am aware of; one is the Blue version which has a lower break strength and the other is Red which has a much higher break strength. I guess it really is a form of glue that is designed to form a semi-permanent bond with metal.

The nice thing is that with the proper amount of persuation the nut and/or bolt can be removed when necessary, but during the course of normal service the bits tend to stay together much better. Use Blue for an application where you are almost certain the parts will have to be disassembled in the future and use Red for parts that may need to be together for many years, or where parts have a tendency to vibrate loose.

So getting back to your alternator I would suggest you use one of those German "wavy" washers and some LocTite Red so the pulley doesn't come flying off your new rig.