PUMA not charging battery

[miky]

2010 PUMA Station Waggon.

Red battery warning light came on. Battery voltmeter monitor showed battery not charging.
Nearest LR dealer was at Dubbo. Arrived at Dubbo, stayed in caravan park for the night. Voltage was down to around 12.4 Volts with engine running.

Next day started car up to drive to dealer and light was out and alternator charging... Damn!!!

Dealer could find nothing wrong except that the computer had two fault codes:
P060-49 PCM control module
P0623-23 generator lamp circuit (light came on)

At least this proved I was not imagining it all.
Apart from resetting fault codes there was nothing else they could do.

Mechanic reckons there is most probably an intermittent fault.
It seems I need to drive into a dealer with the the light on and alternator not charging before LR will accept there is a problem.


So...
Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Any ideas?

I am off on a major trip in September which includes a Simpson Desert crossing. Starting to get worried.

Mike

[austastar]

Hi,
High Amp cables (pos and neg) are securely bolted?

cheers

[DeanoH]

It's been my experience that the most common cause of an alternator giving an intermittent output is poor connection between the slip rings and the brushes.

Generally speaking, there are two main causes for this happening. The first is that the brushes are worn down to a level where there is little or no tension being applied to them by their associated springs. The other common cause is when the alternator is full of dirt/mud/water from driving in messy conditions. Low mounted alternators are more prone to this than alternators mounted high in the engine bay.

Certainly there can be other causes from a loose drive belt to a faulty ECU in some of the more 'Spaceship Enterprise' vehicles.

Unless there is a general quirky charging issue common to your vehicle I'd be looking at this cause first.

Deano :)

[gitney]

Hi Mike,

As Deano posted above. Our puma battery light came on recently when on a trip around aus. We'd driven the day before through a lot of muddy water.
i gave the alternator (and everything else) a clean and spray with wd40 and light went out and hasn't happened since.

Chris

[miky]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I had driven through a LOT of very heavy rain. Some of the heaviest I have ever been through, South of Brisbane. Could hardly see the road. There was also some parts of the road flooded.

Will go over all the connections this weekend, and clean and spray as suggested above. I never thought of water getting in but the alternator is down low...


Mike.

[jasonedu]

I had a similar problem with my 2011 Puma. Everytime I got the tyres wet the the alternator light would come on for a few hours and eventually come good. Happened four times.

My first day in the Simpson a few weeks ago it came on and stayed on - had to do battery swaps all the way. The alternator was replaced by Land Rover.