alternator ?

My alternator only lasted 180,000 miles. Generally with normal equipment there will be no effect to the alternator life.... Unless you have a monster battery and a heavily upgraded charge connection.

My '05 dodge has the same 136A alternator. I have a 440 Ah AGM battery bank. We ski > 70 days a year using the TC, as well as a 3 week ski road trip each year.

Typically use the Honda generator to charge the batteries with an 80A converter when we are staying in one place. Re-wired from the truck alternator lug back to the TC and then returned to truck battery negative terminal using 2 AWG wire, a 150A Mega fuse, and a MOSFET solid state isolater (no real voltage drop).

If we will be traveling in the next day or two we use the truck alternator circuit to recharge the batteries instead of the Honda. Seen 80A initially at 14.4 VDC go into the battery bank when 50% discharge. Been doing this for 10 years on original alternator (275k on the truck now)

While the ECU on the Dodge is suppose to be a 3 stage charger, with temperature compensation, mine just sits at 14.4V most of the time. So I put in a Blue Sea battery switch in the TC to close the circuit once my bank is charged up, to prevent over charging when driving all day to a distant ski area.

Thanks all. I was not concerned about my alternator it was still working good with 335,000 miles on it but we went Alaska so I changed it.I put brushes in it twice.The Denso alt.are good alt.I had a hard time deciding if I should change it.We stayed in CG 4 nights boon-docked the rest of the time.
I have a 120V refrigerator and a cpap plus all the normal TC things. I run 3 battery's and everything worked good for the 9191 mile trip.

Dennis

I have a 2002 Dodge CTD much the same as OP, these trucks come with 136 amp alts., Some came with the Denso Alt. and some the Bosch alt.. I installed a 4 gauge (install required 75ft of 4ga. wire) charge wire back to the camper to charge the two group 31 agm batteries. I can typically see 36amp charge rate to the camper after the batteries get down to 50% cap. Over the past 6 years I have had no alt. problems.

I am with Boatycall that alternators can easy take it and even more.
I had 30 amp alternator on my boat yet I did not hesitate to use 1500W oven (via inverter) with single battery.
Sure high load will wear out the brushes faster and those seem to be available in voltage regulators only, but even the top VR doesn't cost more than $50.
I think the problem is that replacing alternator brushes is very often neglected maintenance and Murhphy law says they will give up 300 miles from electrical shop
Than if you have generator, you do have backup and when alternator died on my Superduty, with dual batteries I was able to make over 100 miles to parts supplier.
No blower, no AC and no lights and the battery can run the engine for long time.

On an rv with one or two batteries you will be fine. It is not a great idea to try and charge a bank of batteries on a diesel pusher that has perhaps four 6 volt and two 12 volt batteries. Heavy duty alternators are used on emergency vehicles and decent size ones on large rv's.

I would not be concerned. Idling while parked can be problematic due to air circulation and hot catalytic converters. I used to turn my tow vehicle around and use heavy duty jumper cables to bring the tt batteries up.

As with any rating you have to take it with a grain of salt. What they don't give you is duty cycle.

Take a look at the battery wire coming off that alternator. What is it? 8ga? 6ga on a good day? Do you think that will take 200A continuous, or even 150A?

The truck manufacturers rate these alternators based on peak short-term output, knowing that 99% of us don't have a clue what they're talking about, and knowing 99.99% of us will never come close to approaching that limit anyway.

Trackrig wrote:

Boatycall wrote:

fishing2 wrote:

Most truck alternators these days are 160amp, newer ones 200amp. .

My 2005 Ford diesel only had a 110 amp alternator and if the OP is talking about his 2001 Dodge, it might even be smaller. I'll agree a little extra load shouldn't hurt the alternator, but they keep making things cheaper and cheaper......

Bill

Actually just the opposite - check stats on any newer truck. They've gone up to meet the increasing load of electronics and options.

For example, Fords base model alternator is now 160a, optional 200a, or a set of double 160a's.

A quick search on the ole interweb shows 2001 Dodge pickup as 136amps, 2014 as 180, optional 220a, and Dodge optional duals @ 440amps. You could literally power a small house through an inverter with 440amps capacity - that's 5,280watts @12v!

Boatycall wrote:

fishing2 wrote:

Most truck alternators these days are 160amp, newer ones 200amp. .

My 2005 Ford diesel only had a 110 amp alternator and if the OP is talking about his 2001 Dodge, it might even be smaller. I'll agree a little extra load shouldn't hurt the alternator, but they keep making things cheaper and cheaper......

Bill

fishing2 wrote:
A boondocking forum I was reading had posts that the alternator wouldn't last charging camper battery's. How many have had alternators fail from a overload after boondocking?

I'm an electrical engineer, I call BS. I won't say this isn't possible, but.. extremely highly unlikely that simply charging a TC battery(ies) killed an alternator.

Why?
Most truck alternators these days are 160amp, newer ones 200amp. The 12v charging pin going to the TC via the pigtail is fuse limited on every truck - some 20a, some 25a, and some lucky few 30amp.
Even at full charge on a completely dead set of TC batteries, the cable can only support a max of 30a(assuming that's what your truck has). A 30 amp draw will not **on its own** or in addition to a regular truck load kill an alternator. Something else had to be at play to kill it. Even with heater going, headlights on, and dead TC batts, that can't overload or kill an alternator.

Just to put it into perspective - diesel glow plugs draw anywhere from 150a-200amp depending on the rig. Starter, another ~200a (deisel).

I have SIX batteries in my TC, on a custom-made 100amp charging circuit I put in. My alternator is now coming up on 15 years old, never had to replace it.