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My friend is having a few woes with his Navara
His alternator died, had ~11v running with the battery light on. So he got a replacement off fleabay.
He has put that in, the battery light remains on and the charging voltage is 15.x volts - way too high.

So he msg'd the seller who sent another alternator to him straight away pretty much. He took the car apart tonight, put the 2nd replacement on.
Same 15.x volts, still way too high, battery light still glowing.

To me this is still a dead regulator, but, odd he has received two alternators from the same seller with the same symptom. the plug has S and D which is sense and diode. Plug only goes in one way, its definately correct. has 12v on sense. I couldnt get him to check the D to see what thats doing, can't remember if its pulled to ground or energised to light the globe in the dash.
He even put his original alternator back on and sure enough back to ~11v and battery light still on.

Thoughts/comments welcome.

Serves your mate right for buying cheap crap....

D is positive to excite

yeah. I reckon its just cheap eBay china crap.

Yeah I bought cheap but shiny new crap for my road gemini, which charges at 15v. Decided to leave it, the the '808 is solid and over 2 years later all is well. Also havnt burnt out the h4 headlight lights (though that might happen). I was never sure if it was meant to have a reg as well or not as it was a transplant and the twin cam application has no local parts but it sounds like the same deal as here. It sounds like this is common at the low end.

i bought a recoed one off an old aussie bloke - he does them now he is retired. was a little bit more expensive than the trump crap ; but ; it still going strong in the hilux no issues at all.

with my mates navara, get this ; he hooked up another battery via jumper leads to his car. started car. it took prolly 30 seconds to get up to 15v, so, before it crept up to 15 he dropped the negative terminal off his battery in the car and used the other battery via leads. the battery light went out and its charging now back at 13.5v. WTF F?

From memory these "sense" alternators actually look at the amps the battery pulls and ramps up the voltage to assist the charging.

higher voltage means less amps therefore a nicer charge for the battery. Generally 14.7 would be max but with the cheaper components it could go to 15. just keep an eye on it but 15 will make the light come on yes. Might be worthwhile charging the battery with a normal battery charger and then use the alternator. You will possibly find the alt will be happier after this.

Regards
oldn64