How to Replace the Alternator on a 2007 Honda Civic

[Music] blugh driver nation welcome back Jim and Chris here with you on a 2007 Honda Civic we're gonna tackle an easy but very common repair on this vehicle changing the alternator it's gonna fail sooner or later for all of you so we're gonna save you a bunch of time save you a bunch of money with this quick video Chris don't be so positive so it's not a hard job at all just a couple of bolts we're also going to show you a trick on how to use two wrenches relieve the belt tension and we're gonna show you how to double check whether your alternator is putting at the right amount of voltage or not using a multimeter that's good stuff Chris let's get to it these are the tools that you'll need to change the alternator a quick test to see if it is your alternator instead of your battery is to check the battery voltage while the vehicle is running right now you might see 12 or less but when the vehicle is running if the alternator is working you should see it pop back up 14 or more okay you can see there we're right about 12 volts so starting the vehicle if it starts and with a good alternator should take that voltage right up with all 14 again we saw the voltage dip slowly recovering so yeah I'd say this one is the bad alternator we're gonna disconnect the battery by removing both clamps by disconnecting the 10 millimeter bolts on each side negative first just to play it safe we're gonna take something like the cap off our penetrating oil and put it over the positive lead just so you can't accidentally short them out now we're going to take the belt off to relieve the belt tension we're going to use a 19 millimeter wrench we're gonna use the box end on the tensioner right here this is a hydraulic tensioner so we're gonna put the wrench over it we're gonna push towards the back of the car we're gonna go gently slowly and then it's gonna compress a little piston we're leaving the belt tension then we're just gonna slip the belt off the alternator I don't have enough clearance here to use any of my sockets so I'm going to use a 19 millimeter wrench ideally you'd have one with a zero degree offset here but a normal box on ranch is going to be fine so we're gonna slide it over the end you might need to pull this hard line out of the way a little bit just to get it on and now I'll show you a little trick we're gonna use a larger 22 millimeter wrench as a cheater to give us a little more leverage so we don't have to push so hard to take the belt tension off so the trick here is you take the box into your second wrench and now we've got some extra leverage to work with all right we're gonna push forward slowly careful that your cheater wrench doesn't slide off to the side now we're gonna slide the belt off being careful not to put our finger between the belt and any of the pulleys and slowly release the tensioner remove the battery cable using a ten millimeter socket pull up in this rubber boot pushing on the clip and pull up now we're gonna push in on this clip here disconnect ideally this connector would just come right off that bracket you might find that it's so seized together that you can't move it you might risk breaking off this tab entirely so I'm just gonna take a 10 mil and remove this bracket completely then if you're lucky you can pry up in this tab right here and this will just pull off the bracket if it doesn't then the same thing applies you can just take a 10 mil and remove it the alternator is held on with two 12 millimeter bolts there's one here on the back just under that bracket there's a second one down here underneath the pulley don't mistake that bolt with the one further forward which holds on the tensioner if you got a couple of extra minutes it'll be a really good idea to take some of penetrating oil of your choice spray down that bolt on the back and the one under the pulley if you're gonna do this put down some cardboard or something to prevent overspray onto the belt and the other pulleys and then maybe go take a break for a couple of minutes just to make your life a little bit easier we need to remove this wire we could take this bracket off but there's not much clearance don't really have enough room to get a socket on those bolts we could use a wrench I'm just gonna take a screwdriver to trim the clip tool or something like that pressing on the back wedge it a little bit pressing on the back side wiggle a little bit and it should pop right out then I'll just do the same thing for the bottom now we remove the 212 millimeter bolts and our second bolt you can see it's a lot shorter and I'm gonna put that in the official parts tray and remove the alternator if it sticks it all you can label it a little bit or if necessary you can use a pry bar alright so old-new you can see the new one doesn't have any of the brackets attached pletely naked we're gonna take all these brackets we're gonna swap them over let's swap some brackets the three of them that are coming from over here to over here all ten millimeter bolts now our nice new shiny alternator is covered old rusty garbage alright now that all the brackets are on we're gonna put the new alternator back in you've probably noticed that suddenly the water pump got a lot shinier we did another video on replacing the water pump while the alternator was off you can check that out we'll add a link to it in the comments so we'll just put that in place the long bolt goes in the back like that the shorter bolt goes underneath the pulley we're going to talk both bolts 217 foot baths and the bottom bolt is 17 foot-pounds as well we're gonna use the same 19 millimeter box and ranches before grabber 22 to use as a cheater slowly compress that piston take the belt being very careful not to get your finger between the belt in the pulley slide it over the alternator and slowly let off on the ranch now we're going to reconnect all the cables and brackets all right we're going to take that cable we disconnected before and we're going to push those white Clips back in and we're gonna reinstall this bracket now we'll reconnect the battery positively goes first and now the ground so we had our battery disconnected which means that your radio might be an ante theft mode you know this is the case if you try to turn it on and you just get enter code on the screen if you don't know how to unlock your radio then we've got another video covering this and we'll include a link in the description hey that's all wrapped up tools back in the box tested everything's good to go car back on the road hope this saved you a bunch of time and a bunch of money and if it did please like the video and subscribe to our YouTube channel until next time fear no fix