| Re: "hopeless l98 alternators" |
Subject: Re: "hopeless l98 alternators" by Subman on 2009/2/6 8:14:44 I just installed #7 in 3 years. All AZ, all under LT warranty. After the 3rd one, a couple of years ago, I decided to find out what was up. There are 2 areas that are 90% the cause of mine that failed: 1 - the biggest culprit is the bearings. If you hold a new alt up to your ear and rotate the shaft back and forth, you can hear the bearings click. When I opened them up, they are a little over 1/2 ball bearing short. The large gap between the balls becomes even more of a challenge when they get as hot as these do from just compartment heat. I made them give me new, in the package, Timpkin bearings. And those had no problems and the alt lasted 3 years. 2 - number 2 is the regulator. I am pretty sure they get a bunch of bad regulators, don't QC 'em, ship the alt's and wait to see if Joe Consumer bitches a bunch when they return them. My #5 alt would over-volt to 19 volts, intermittently. I had to wait until it over-volted, rush to AZ so somebody there could look at it. #6 alt would under-volt to 7 volts, again, intermittently. This time I got a little smarter, I took pict's with the phone. #7 seems to be doing ok. I did write to the AZ home office to let them know of my displeasure (a gentlemans version), but have yet to hear back from them. It don't take too many trips to replace parts to find a different supplier. I'm already there. Subman |
