Spend 400 bucks for dual alternators on new Ram build?

GeoBoy wrote:
If you don’t have solar installed get it installed. Great way to keep the batteries charged while traveling.

Solar is good until the sun sets. You can also harvest more amp-hours from the truck than any solar install on a TC roof. One of the reasons I chose the Redarc DC-DC charger is because it has a built-in MPPT solar controller, and the unit will always take as much power from the Solar input as it can before supplementing that power, up to the maximum rated output, from Vehicle power input. Best of both worlds.

:):)

220 Single Alt, is just fine. Wasn't that many years ago that we had 45-55 Amp Alts.

If you don’t have solar installed get it installed. Great way to keep the batteries charged while traveling.

Arctic Fox 990 is a truck camper, so it’s hauled, not pulled like a trailer.

If you truly want to “more efficiently charge my camper while driving”, you’d be way better off putting a DC-DC charger in the TC as close to the camper battery as possible, rather than trying to do it with the truck’s alternator and bigger wires alone. I have no experience with dual alternators, but if the alternator is connected to the truck’s starting batteries, they are always going to base their output on the state of charge of those because they are closer to them. If they’re close to fully charged, and the camper batteries are lower, the camper batteries aren’t going to charge very well.

If you want to actually charge up your camper batteries as close to 100% as possible, Read This.

DC-DC chargers will also require heavier charging wires, but not as heavy as you’d need to get better charging using just the alternator alone. My install called for 6 gauge wires, but I had already installed 4 gauge wires and was disappointed with the results using just the alternator.

There are other brands of DC-DC chargers than the one I used (Redarc). CTEK and Renogy just off the top of my head. Renogy just recently came out with some very attractively priced units that I wish had been available when I bought mine. I’d love to see someone on here “Guinea Pig” one of them for us! :W

:):)

“and it’s more than sufficient to quickly charge both batteries.“

You can try to throw lots and lots of amps at a battery but during the absorption phrase (80/85% to 100% full) the battery will only accept a diminishing amount and its takes time.

I would say 95% of the time you will be much better off with upgrading your wiring to No 8 wires or even No 6. The true reason you would want to do this is only if you don't have solar power, and you like to travel only for a couple hours. Larger wires will feed that engine power to your battery charger (usually a 45 amp per hour charger) and an average day camping will often consume 45 amps. But remaining at the No 12 feeds from your engine, will likely require about three hours driving instead of about one with bigger wires. It's not often that a single alternator would not provide that much power above all other needs.

I went with the larger 220amp alternator option. It’s only a $50 upgrade from the factory and it’s more than sufficient to quickly charge both batteries.