Just bought a 2001 tribute 159000 miles on it . My trouble is it has gone through 3 alt in the past 6 weeks. checked all the grounds and and wiring,all looked . the eec and the fuel pump relay are getting very hot, along with the two main wires going to the fuse box under the hood. It seems to be wrawing to many amps through the system. It puts out 14.2 volts when you first crank it up but drops down between 13.5 and 13.7 after it warms up, and when the a/c is on and the condensor fans kick on high it drops to 12.2 and recovers to 13.3 alt sounds like it is under a real heavy load . Any ideas where to look or if anyboby has run into this before.

 

Your ALT volts are good. What about your belt and tension? Do a half hour open road daytime run with min. poss. electrical load. Let the car cool down for half an hour and check the engine off no load battery volts; you should see about 12.5. Repeat the same no load measurement before your first morning start, again you should see about 12.5 volts. The belt drive in particular is very important because if there is slip, two things happen, the slip heat at the pulley is conducted into the alternator rotor, and the alternator speed deficit is compensated by an increased exciter current, piling still more heat into the rotor (and overloading the slip rings as well).

 

replaced both the belt and the tensionor and the the alt and pulley. new batt had already checked the voltage at the batt it was 12.8 cold start up in the morning and 13.1 after about 45min cool down after short road trip. If it was the belt slipping that would not explain the relays and the two main cables at the 120amp fuse being that hot at the fuse box under the hood. the last alt that i put on lasted about 10min.i was looking at the volt meter right when it happened, it went from 13.5 volts to 12.1 volts right when the condensor fans cut on and never recovered. returned it back to autozone they tested it said the regulator was bad (I know you get what you pay with autozone) They were the only ones around the area that had one

 

Well it does look like a heavy duty fault current doing some mischief. A few things you can do:
1. With ign. off, check your condenser fan turns freely and there are no obstructions in the way of it, or any unsecured wiring that could get sucked into the rotor path.
2. Disconnect the fan motor and the compressor magnetic clutch and check they haven't got partial shorts to ground.
3. Do the same with the thermal switch (the snaky thing running down the lower driver's side of the radiator).

The other electrical stuff associated with the air conditioning and worth checking are an overtemp. cutout switch on the compressor, and a refrigerant pressure switch located on the dryer unit, again low down on the driver's side. Unfortunately I don't have schematics, so I don't know if all of them are in the hot or ground side of their respective circuits.
Like you I don't see any obvious association between the A/C hardware and the fuel pump and
(eec?- what is that?).
Do they and the main feeder cables to the engine compartment fusebox still run hot even if the A/C is off ?
I think the next step would be to unship the battery and the main feeders, and unbolt the engine compartment fusebox so you can have a look for damaged/pinched wiring on the underside of it.