Talk to me about alternators.

[hesutton]

The alternator seems to be giving up on the F250. In the am with the light on, defrost on, the voltmeter shows battery voltage only. When I turn off the defrost, the voltage may increase to 13 or so volts at RPM. It will not show more than battery voltage at idle........... lights off, heater off.


Any suggestions?

Good source for a quality alternator?



Heath

 

[freebird01]

*sorry my bad...250 not 350*


nothing to see here...move along people

 

[8seconds]

Heath,

I may have missed it noted in your signature, but have you considered the 3G alternator upgrade. If not I would strongly consider doing the mod.; since changing over to the 3G alternator (Napa Gold series). I have not looked back, not to mention I don't have to worry about the exterior voltage regulator.

 

[Blind Driver2]

get the alternator and batteries tested :homer:

 

[riotwarrior]

Heath, if you want a quality build, Powermaster makes a good alternator. Maybe not a cheap one...it's just that they do some serious quality.

As mentioned previously, a 3G is one heck of a decent upgrade! Easy, and affordable. Just my thoughts on this as I have done one and it's awesome!...My 3G just happened to be a Powermaster too

 

[icanfixall]

Heath... I have a really great mom and pop shop here in cali but you may not want to buy and ship that far. The owner will make you anything you want but will advise you if what you want is out of order for what you can drive it with. Trying to drive a 300 amp alternater off one tiny belt is not going to work. I showed him my 200 amp ebay buy because I thought it was failing... He looked at it and told me it was not a 200 amp unit... Of course I asked how can he tell that just by looking at it. Well he pointed out each bundle of coil leads in the field. I had two wires and not three wires in that. A 200 amp alternater has three coil wires in each bundle.... Boy was I ever pissed off getting robbed by some ebay ***** and didn't even know it at the time.... We do learn...

 

[subway]

when i was testing charging systems at the Zone lol i turned on all the power sucking equipment in the vehicle. if voltage dropped below 13.5 at the battery the alternator was not keeping up. it honestly sounds like it is getting weak, they dont put out there peak output at idle. if you are showing battery voltage it might not even be keeping up with demand and the batteries are holding you up until you get the rpms up again to start recharging them and the alternator takes back over.

get a voltmeter and test the voltage at the battery, also make sure your connections are good everywhere, this can mess up the voltage regulation also. this include battery, alternator and any connections in between on that circuit. its good to rule that out before a rebuild to make sure the alternator was really the culperit.

 

[GOOSE]

Dave Young was offering a rebuild service if you have the time to ship it. I have given up on the parts store and found a very good rebuilder in my area. He just rebuilt a starter from an L series walk behind Gravely tractor and has a motor off of a Ramsey 8,000lb wrecker winch right now. I'd do some local researching Heath, as Gary stated, the mom and pop shops are standing out in an era of questionable quality from the chain store operations. Good luck Heath.

 

[typ4]

you cant go by the dash voltage with the heater on, the switch turns on positive power to the fan which creates a huge draw on the dash wiring, if you put a relay just on the orange wire of the fan out by it and the battery, the dash voltage will increase almost 2 volts, . now you still may have an alt prob but this is what I found when my volt meter was low.

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

If you want something custom-rebuilt or repaired, we have had good results with B&B rebuilders in Somerset; if you want to check them, PM me for the number.

They are about 35-miles from me and I am about 90-ish miles from you, so about 125-ish from you.


That being said, I am a strong believer in retrofitting the bullet-proof Leece-Neville 110-555 160-amp J-mount(?I think?)

These are externally-regulated with the regulator actually bolted onto the back of the alternator.

I buy them brand-new from E-Bay vendors for very reasonable.

 

[icanfixall]

The design of an alternater is to refill the batteries after a start drain on them. Then once the batteries are up to full power the alternater feeds power to all electrical drains on the system. They are not to recharge a fully discharged battery. Kinda makes you look at the batteries and alternater a little differantly now doesn't it.

 

[Can30Diesel]

I just put a 2 wire chev alternator in my truck. Never had a charging problem since and so far the earth hasn't opened up and swallowed me for doing so.

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

Before I got too far into looking for a replacement, I would check the alternator's output at the battery with a known-good volt-meter.

I have had dash-mounted volt-meter gauges to change their reading habits for no apparant reason whatsoever; one day, the needle reads as it always has for years; and, the next, it reads a volt or so higher or lower, usually lower, making one think the gauge is accurate and some other component is at fault.

 

[riotwarrior]

A agree with MIDNIGHT RIDER...LEECENEVILLE are an extremely durable and very good alternator, however, if you do any travel and in NOT big cities, the 3G is the way to go, it's simplistic, Ford used them on lots of trucks including ours when they did serp belt changeover. And you can walk into just about any parts store or even any wrecker and grab one off the shelf...or off any taurus/sable/explorer etc and be up and running in a bad situation instead of stuck, waiting for your LEECE to show up courier...if you have a failure...

JM2CW

 

[icanfixall]

A agree with MIDNIGHT RIDER...LEECENEVILLE are an extremely durable and very good alternator, however, if you do any travel and in NOT big cities, the 3G is the way to go, it's simplistic, Ford used them on lots of trucks including ours when they did serp belt changeover. And you can walk into just about any parts store or even any wrecker and grab one off the shelf...or off any taurus/sable/explorer etc and be up and running in a bad situation instead of stuck, waiting for your LEECE to show up courier...if you have a failure...

JM2CW

Just buy a spare and place it behind the rear seat.....