Okay, so here is the question with my scenario:

I have a 244 1991 automatic. 150,xxx miles or so. I searched and researched all over the forums and the world of Google and determined pretty conclusively that the alternator was shot. Starting the car, and running a meter across the battery revealed a voltage of 12.4 V--low, and clearly not getting charged. Reving the motor made no difference. So, car off, battery reads 12.6V. Pretty clear--alternator isn't sending any voltage to the battery. I pop off the alternator pull it apart, and viola! the brushes look pretty well spent.

So, the 64,000 Dollar question: Has anyone replaced the brushes in a bosch alternator without replacing the voltage regulator? there is no indication that the VR is bad, and brushes cost a woping $3.50 & are easy to find. But replacing them doesn't seems very obvious. So, I appeal to the Forum: Has anyone replaced the brushes in their voltage regulator without replacing the Voltage Regulator?

I will likely try it out and if I screw something up too badly in the process, end up replacing the whole voltage regulator. But any insight would be helpful.

 

So... nobody commented... which is fine... I found resources to get just the brushes, but I was working on the 240 which i'll not see in person for a few months... no one could get me brushes in a timely manner, so I found a shop that sold me the whole thing (brushes + voltage regulator) for $25. Poped that in, and it worked like a charm. Maybe next time I'll have time to experiment with changing only the brushes & keeping the Voltage Regulator. I have another car I may be able to try that with, though.

 

Of course you can just replace the brushes (sorry; didn't see your first post in time). Nine times out of ten that will "fix" your alternator.

Problem is nobody (AFAIK) will sell you just the brushes any more. I can remember when i used to just take the old brushes out and run them down to the local starter/alternator shop, they would match them up with the right size in new ones, charge me $5 and i would be all set. But i haven't been able to do that in at least 10 years... it's a bummer.