Ford Superduty battery and charging issue

[westend]

Yesterday, I had my small utility trailer on the hitch of my 2003 F-250. I had dropped the trailer off and then put it back on the ball. Since it was near nightfall, I checked for running lights on the trailer. No luck. I messed with the 4X connector for a bit and finally gave up, choosing to leave the trailer until daylight. On the way home, the battery indicator and ABS indicator lit up on the dash display. I stopped the truck to inspect and barely got it restarted. I made it another two miles and the truck would not run.

This morning, I went back to truck with a fully charged battery, installed it, and made the 5 mile drive to home. All indicator lamps are now off but measuring across battery posts with engine running, I'm seeing 12.3V.

All symptoms point toward a failed alternator but this charging system has been flawless for 11 years. Is it possible that I blew a fusible link or some other circuit interruption instead of a failed alternator?

Anyone have any diagnostic tips for me?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Amperes + added turns of wire is like rubbing the magic lantern.

ROMAINE ELECTRIC is the West Coast king of rewinding, motors, generators, stators, you name it. Seattle WA.

[NinerBikes]

And how is rewinding an alternator much different than when I used to rewind the armatures of the electric motors of my early day slot cars as a kid, for lower resistance and ability to take more amps and create more torque? Just asking, I'd think the principles are related.

When a good friend of mine, doing elevator renovations needed a big motor rewound, the job always went to Little John's, I think over there by Paramount, CA and the Farmer John's pig farm /butcher shop.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

External regulators occupy a heatsink about twice the area of integral regulators. OEM is like a fart in a whirlwind with regard to alternator design. MoPar and don't know whom else uses the ECU as a basis for alternator voltage regulation.

Brushless alternators have horrible low speed performance. To improve this weakness with a fleet of school buses I rewound the rotor spool increasing ampere/turns and ended up with a 1.7 ohm rotor resistance. I then designed a double Wye stator and plugged each slot with 15.5 gauge wire and rectified the Wye with 30-ampere surface mount rectifiers.

ORIGINAL

75-ampere hot rating maximum
18-amperes at 1,600 rotor RPM


MODIFIED

142-amperes max at 1,200 RPM -less- than the OEM rating.
57-amperes @ 1,600 RPM

I used the TRANSPO 911-04 Voltage regulator which was attached to the rear housing plate of those 25 SI Delcos. A 50-amp rated power transistor heat sinked to a massive radiator, equally massive electrolytic caps, MR2535 avalanche diode.

Nineteen modified busses. Seven years. Not one comeback or misfire. The NTN LUA 6305 bearing choice helped too 🙂

All done on a supposedly hopeless "brushless" alternator.


Frank Oropeza TRANSPO gone

Big Al Renard, Renard rectifiers gone

Elmer Trapp Ace Electric (stator and rotor manufacturing) gone

Lund & Flynn thank god are still around but Bill Lund passed away

St. Marys Carbon is still there but I can no longer purchase custom brushes in mil quantities.

But it was fun while it lasted. Frankenstein's Lab. A 15 HP variable speed hydraulic alternator test bench with tachometer and NIST grade instrumentation. Tattle-tale adhesive temperature discs that spoke volumes about interior conditions. This is the era when Frank Oropeza of Transpo visited for a week and Marion Hovermale of Delco (the CS alternator project leader engineer) visited for four days. Fun times. Awful nerdy but I lapped it up. They both were fascinated with ongoing battery tests, all managed by custom designed automation. Crude, rude, and effective. Hate to have to price 1M of 10-gauge nichrome wire these days.

There was a rebuilding shop in Fremont, CA whose owner was sharp as a hypodermic needle. What a joy it was talking with him for a couple of days. The year was 1984. His quote "And here I thought I was all alone".

Today I fear the USA is continuing to morph into a society of Wogs. A Just-Get-By society-wide mentality.

[NinerBikes]

I forget if it was Nippon Denso or who it was that made the alternator in my 1987 Toyota SR5 XtraCab 4x4, but at 195k miles, the alternator stopped charging. A trip to a Napa auto parts store, $3.50 in a set of new brushes, pulling off the alternator, a soldering iron and some new solder, and I was up and running again in about an hour. Cleaned up the commutators with a pencil erasure, and a dental pick between each commutator to clean out the gunk, and called it good for another 195k miles.

This was when I was younger, and very much more mechanically inclined.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Ford has always had a fetish for short brushes. Even the first generation has stubs. I had vance at St Marys Carbon make all my ford brushes 1/8" longer than OEM plus a high copper content.

Charge battery before starting engine. The Hallmark Of Gar-BAGGE!

My motto: leave all batteries discharged. Start engine and rev it. JEEZUS! WHAT DO YOU THINK MOTORHOME ALTERNATORS DO FOR a living? Purveyors of Garbage KNOW their offal is fragile. Pretty-please don't make it w-o-r-k. It'll fail for sure. You seek garbage you'll find it with ten million flies.

Good going on the new alt BUT BUT BUT BUT

Check with the Service Dept and see if you need to upgrade the harness fusible link ratings. You do not need a fusible link between alternator and battery unless your plans include direct shorting the outputbwire to the engine block. 110-Amperes would love to see 8 AWG wire to the battery. Six AWG if longer than 8'.

[down_home]

westend wrote:
Yesterday, I had my small utility trailer on the hitch of my 2003 F-250. I had dropped the trailer off and then put it back on the ball. Since it was near nightfall, I checked for running lights on the trailer. No luck. I messed with the 4X connector for a bit and finally gave up, choosing to leave the trailer until daylight. On the way home, the battery indicator and ABS indicator lit up on the dash display. I stopped the truck to inspect and barely got it restarted. I made it another two miles and the truck would not run.

This morning, I went back to truck with a fully charged battery, installed it, and made the 5 mile drive to home. All indicator lamps are now off but measuring across battery posts with engine running, I'm seeing 12.3V.

All symptoms point toward a failed alternator but this charging system has been flawless for 11 years. Is it possible that I blew a fusible link or some other circuit interruption instead of a failed alternator?

Anyone have any diagnostic tips for me?

Every Ford Alternator we've had on Mustnags, Cougars, 2 wheel drive and four wheel drive dualie diesees with twin alternaorts and twin heavy duty batteries went out in the 50 to 60,000 mile range. The diesels spin a little lower so the alternator lasted a little longer.
The same on my 05 F150 It was replaced at about 60,000 miles and is past due by experience at 191,000 unless wife had it changed and dididn't tell or I just forgot.

[westend]

I am probably getting this alternator: Ford part # 10346(GL-8725RM). It is not a reman but Motorcraft new part for trucks with Trailer, Snowplow packages. It is the higher output 115 amp with magenta stator wires as Mex defined earlier. $214 and tax at my local dealer. O'reilly's price for similar reman is $268.

[Golden_HVAC]

Yes time for a new alternator.

Most alternators come with a warning to avoid starting the engine until after the battery is fully charged.

The alternator giving up yesterday probably had nothing to do with the trailer being pulled. More that it is 10+ years old.

My buddy jump started a large crane once. It was only a short time later that he needed to replace the alternator. From that time on, I have always jump started the other cars by leaving my engine running while charging their battery, then shut off my car before attempting to start their car. This prevents my alternator from having the 300+ amp load of starting another car on it! Instead the jumped car can use my 600 CCA rated battery for a few seconds.

Fred.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Incidence of failure causes Ford 3-G, 4-G and 6-G alternators. One thousand + sample

• Voltage Regulator
• Failed regulator due to brushes wearing down to springs and shorting
• Spin-open rotor. Continuity when stopped broken wire open circuits when alternator spins
• Failed rectifier
• Failed oerheated stator
• Failed drive end or slip ring end bearing

lot. Causes in ordinal format...



Rewound stators and rotors are garbage for ten thousand reasons. The most important is THE ALTERNATOR LOSES MUCH OF IT'S LOW SPEED AMPERAGE CAPABILITY. OEM rebuilts do NOT use remanufactured rotors or stators for a reason. Stator rewinders usually use a quarter gauge larger wire in hopes that a few amps high speed output will satisfy customers. OEM does NOT USE CHINA GARBAGE bearings. Nor Hangdong voltage regulators.

[RJsfishin]

There should be battery voltage at the large alternator terminal, whether the nator has failed or not.

If the nator has failed, why not install a new set of brushes, and a front bearing ??? Never found that to not fix a nator yet, and I've done a bunch.

[Dave_H_M]

When my F250 alternator lost its mind, I got a reman from ORilley's with a lifetime warranty.

Who knows where the Stealer's reman's come from. :h 😉

[westend]

Thanks, Mex. I wish I knew half of what you know about alternators. I would chance a rebuild of the bad one. My local Ford Dealer has the higher output alternator that came with the truck available. They are not cheap but a Motorcraft reman is about what the other parts vendors are getting for a garden variety reman.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

116 year old man found flat on the floor. Some will argue that a change in diet would fix the problem, even though he has lain there for three weeks.

A 3-G, 4G, or 6-G will start raising battery voltage INSTANTANEOUSLY when the engine is started. IMPOSSIBLE for it to not to do so. The FUSIBLE LINK that connects power to the cab, the ignition switch and the reference voltage regulator A connection and the S lamp excitation circuit on the alternator, also powers the key switch, lights, and fuel pump. Been there done that. Ford protects the alternator against LOAD DUMP due to a failed fusible link.

I like the idea of RETAINING the original rotor and the original stator, using 50-amp dish diodes instead of the original 30-amp dish diodes and sticking with a brand new voltage regulator. The 3-6 G uses eight rectifiers instead of six because it has a rectifies Y connection. Take a look a the STATOR winding color through the case holes or slots. is the wire colored magenta/purple? If yes you have the highest-amperage model of that alternator line. If the stator color is GREEN the alternator is not the highest amperage model. Hope this helps.

[westend]

Roy, thanks for the input. I've had the battery connections off a number of times and don't really notice any bad performance issues. I have a code reader/resetter and had the check engine light come on--code was an EGR issue. I reset the code but it kept coming back (indicating a continual fault). Last night, after removing the battery, the computer reset and the check engine light is off. Also, the ABS fault indicator was lit, along with the battery indicator. With a well charged battery, all indicators are off.

[westend]

NinerBikes wrote:
My basic test was start the motor up, then disconnect the negative side of the battery. Does it still run? Alternator is good, could be the voltage regulator. Does the motor die? Alternator is probably bad, test for output voltage and amperage, as well as voltage regulator.

Niner, verified that there is no current between alternator and battery. Fusible links verified to have continuity (the two that I could find). AFAIK, voltage regulation is internal to the alternator. Don't know if there is a separate regulation module or not.
Right now, I'd wish to fire up the teleporter and land on Mex's doorstep with questionable alternator in hand. I bet the guy could rebuild it with his eyes closed.:B