Uprated Alternator

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mvcoller
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Uprated Alternator

Post by mvcoller »

In the late 1990 early 2000s I owned a Sani 3lt V6. It was kitted out for camping and overlanding but I found the alternator was a bit "light" for charging the fridge's deep cycle battery on days that did not involve long distances or many ours driving. The Sani only had a 65 or 70 amp alternator.

At the time there was an Auto Electrician on the eastern side of Edenvale who used to uprate alternators (he apparently rewound the armature to achieve this) and he uprated the Sani's Bosch alternator to about 90 amps, and he also fitted a FLAG voltage regulator into the alternator that upped the output voltage from about 13.9v to 14.4v.

Does anybody know an auto electrician on the near East Rand area who could do something similar to the current alternator of my 2008 3.0 TDi Patrol. I unfortunately do not know what alternator is fitted to this vehicle.

On my January 2 week safari with customers into the Kalahari and Mabuasehube, in heat of 44 degrees plus and days where we only traveled 3 or 4 hours per day, the batteries really suffered, and the the fridge having to run about flat out 90% of the day an really battling to reach 5 degrees and the freezer -5 made life hell for the two deep cycle batteries. The fact that I had two 110 ah batteries saved the day most of the time, but also compounded the problem, as it would require about 8 hours driving to put a decent charge into them both. I run a 90 NL Weekender, and it has the thinner sidewalls with less insulation, so the batteries went down to below "NORMAL" as indicated ton the NL Dual Battery system's Battery Status Indicator by morning. If the next day I travelled longer (around 6 or 8 hours) the problem went away, until the next "short" day.

I am happy with the NL Solenoid system, it has never let me down in the 21 years I have owned one. A short stint in using a 40 amp DC to DC, sucked my main battery "dry" to the point where the lights (early morning start, in the dark) and also radio even working. Fortunately I still had the solenoid system installed, so I took off the DC to DC charger and within hours the batteries were all three back to normal. I am reluctant to go through this again.

I am sure a 120 amp uprated alternator would solve the problem. I do not want to fit an aftermarket model, which may require modifications, as such modifications are difficult to overcome should one have a problem in the sticks, somewhere north of here and new parts (such as in the case of a faulty alternator) need to be found or ordered from a distant dealer!
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Tinus lotz
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Re: Uprated Alternator

Post by Tinus lotz »

Dude....
Your crank battery does not want anything above 14v

If you don't want to go dc to dc get a silver cadmium type sealed battery and it will work but most modern type batteries needs 14.8 to work properly
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