Alternator Life Expectancy

Bearing are usually the first thing to go from my experience. Consider replacing just the bearings. Otherwise, alternators can last 200,000 miles.

If that had been one of the ECS series, you might have been changing them a couple of times per year, at least in some applications.

Going this long tells me that this is not the case, so this alternator could live a long time still.

Some people say "dont fix it if it ain't broke". There is some wisdom to that. You could have a plethora of different possible failures on the road, and you probably cant afford to repair or replace everything that can go wrong.

You can probably replace the brushes, bearings, and regulator yourself, or take it in to a local alternator shop and have them freshen it up for you if you are concerned about it.

Luckily, I haven't had an alternator failure in probably 20 years. Back when failures used to be more common, it was always the diode trio. I've never had a bearing failure in my 46 years of driving.

I have had bearing failures on the GM ECS series. What a piece of shit!!

But, in general, I have had more failures with the integral voltage regulator.

What is the ECS series? There is the DN, SI, CS, and AD series of alternators. The OPs 105 would be a CS130 alt. I would suggest since this is a 'burb that he upgrade to a CS144 140 amp unit with appropriate fused charge lead and add the remote sense lead if GM so lovingly left it out on his model as they did on our '94 C1500 pickup and '97 Lumina.

I've seen many bearing failures with GM alternators (mostly the CS-144 series), so it does happen.

Sorry.. This would be the CS series of compact high output alternators. The "E" was extraneous. Lots of bearing failures with these. BUT, if he has enough room under the hood that this alternator can stay cool, it explains why his has lasted so long.