These are known for eating alternators, and one of the warning signs is the "christmas dash" which is pretty much all your warning lights lighting up except for the check engine light. Usually it starts out with some flickering and gets progressively worse. The alt. are small and it sits right under a leaky power steering pump. Well finally started smoking and then one morning "no starty" and the battery was dead! So out with the alternator and it looks like my alternator harness is gone too. This is another common issue on the vans with 200K + as the wires going into the big plug on the alternator tend to break.
With the 2wd vans an alternator removal is easy peasy. Just undo it and then remove it from the bottom. Well with the 4wd's, the front diff is in the way and it seems impossible to pull it out the top. Well it can be done and I took some pics of the orientation needed to pull it out.
Obviously, you need to disconnect the alternator plug and the wires, and you need to remove the bolts holding the alternator. This is more of a "how to" after you have done that and are sitting there wondering if you now have to remove more parts just to get it out of the engine bay.
You need to grab a hold of the coolant reservoir and pull it straight up. It should come off and you should be able to leave it all connected and just move it out of the way and in an orientation that it isn't spilling any coolant.
So once I knew it was possible, it took maybe 5 mins, including wiping my hands off and getting the camera out of the house. You have to turn the alternator around backwards to get it past the fan shroud and upper alt bracket both the fan shroud and bracket have some give to them which is much needed and helpful. Here's a pic of how it looks once it is past those and the orientation that I pulled it up through.
Next you have to get it past the coolant reservoir bracket and the power steering pump pulley. I just kind of muscled it and it bent the bracket just a bit but nothing a screwdriver can't bend back. Here's a pic of the bracket.
I'm going to print out that first pic and put it in the glove box or with an FSM when I get one.
Hopefully this will help someone down the road.
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