Power Struggle

ALTERNATOR AILMENTS ALMOST RUIN A CATCH-UP WITH PALS.

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WE WERE stepping off on a six-week run through the mulga, the desert and the Gulf country when, on day one, we struck a problem. Travelling along the Sturt Highway on the Hay Plain, the entire instrument panel simply turned off. Happily, we had full control, but it was still off-putting. So we stopped for some roadside diagnosis, where we couldn’t see any blown fuses or other obvious causes. So we gently cruised into Balranald, settled into the town’s caravan park, and went in search of a mechanic.

It didn’t take long for the guys at Balranald Diesel Service to identify that the Denso 85amp OEM alternator was shorting and had blown the fusible link. With no suitable spares on hand, parts were ordered from Swan Hill and Mildura. It was pretty obvious we were going to be looking at a layover of more than 24 hours or more, so we headed to the Shamrock Hotel around the corner to reacquaint ourselves with Schnitty Night.

Over beers and dinner we chatted about whether we may have put the alternator under undue pressure, or whether it had simply reached the end of its natural life. After all, an alternator typically lasts around seven years or 100,000km. For the previous nine years it had happily fed our Redarc BCDC 1240 that served our twin Optima D27F Yellow Top 66amp/h batteries. Since 2013, we’d also connected the unit to our Echo 4x4 Kavango camper, which carries twin Ultimate Xtreme 12V 120amp/h deep-cycle AGM batteries.

In addition to these four batteries, the other obvious accessories feeding off the system were two fridges (a 40-litre Engel in the back tray and an 80-litre ARB in the camper). So while the 85amp OEM alternator seemed small, she’d been doing a decent job … until now. When the only replacement available within a 200km radius was an aftermarket 85amp alternator, we didn’t have much choice but to slot her in and get back on the road.