Hi again cost, that does not sound like it's the alternator, unless you disconnected the batteries while you charged them, and then reconnected them and could not start?
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I suspect its more of how often the alternator has to charge at high capacity as that's what stresses the diodes. Long runs don't stress the diodes nearly as much per km travelled due to lower current being generated once the battery has recovered. It still comes down to how many starts though which roughly equates to age if used daily.
And yes mainly short trips, charged overnight once a month.
Scott.
My D4 has a Traxide USI 160 for the Optima battery and also charges the caravan Lithium batteries from the Traxide Anderson Plug via a 40A Enerdrive DC2DC charger in the KK and has done many tens of thousands of km doing this with no alternator issues. As mentioned in my post above I recently replaced the alternator while other work was being done that made access easier, to ensure reliability on remote trips. My alternator is obviously working hard charging the Optima and providing 40A to the caravan (more like 45 to 50A through the Anderson Plug) plus all the other stuff that it runs and it was fine up to 240,000km and still going strong. It has been used for touring, towing and off road for most of its life and not a lot of short trips around town.
Hi Bob, your alternator worked fine for 240,000kms without failing.
Yet my RR alternator failed at 97,000, and this is in a vehicle that was so unreliable and unusable that I never bothered to fit a dual battery system in to it prior to the failure, and because it is so unreliable, it has done few long trips but a hell of a lot of short trips.
Fits right in to what Graeme was saying.
I've personally replaced many d3 and d4 alternators at way less than 150k. Some tdv8 at less than 100k!!😣