smoking alternators

Ok, here's the deal. I was changing a bad brake booster tuesday (note to all, remove battery before doing this) I was using a long extension to get to the lower nuts on the engine side when I accidently made contact with the pos battery terminal. Two days later, my alternator is gone. I had a backup on the shelf and I installed that one. It lasted a day. At first I thought maybe they were on their last leg anyway but after remembering the battery incident, I think I fried a diode or something. Any thoughts.........thanks

I took them both down and had them tested. Fusable links are good. I'll have the battery checked out as well.

StangGT1995 said:

It's possible that you just happened to lose the second alternator completely unrelated to the first. The short circuit when your socket wrench contacted the positive terminal could also have killed a cell in the battery and I could see that killing another alternator.

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I thought that as well. I have another alternator off a convertible that I'm restoring but I'm afraid to put it on there only to smoke it too until I know I don't have another issue. I'm actually going to do a G3 upgrade on it. I'm just waiting on my stator pigtail to get here. I have an electric fan that the stock alt can't handle too well. If I put the conv alternator in there, I may pull the electric fan and put my flex fan on there until all my parts come in. I still believe that the electric fan is the way to go, I just need the charging system to handle it.