H.O. Alt

[bubbagumper6 5,000+ posts]

so a 280 amp alt from dc?

That's pretty big, where did you come up with that number?

 

[ozzy87 10+ year member]

dc's website, it's 160@idle. the difference between a 240 and a 280 is only like 7 bucks

 

[ozzy87 10+ year member]

so a 280 amp dc and 1 deka and one regular batt good enough?

 

[TurdFergueson2 5,000+ posts]

what's a decent price?

DCpowerinc.com

mechman.com

 

[SmartAsss 10+ year member]

If your adventurous, you can rebuild your alternator to a HO. for half the price of any pre-built alt. Alternator & Starter Parts - Repair kits - High Output Alternators & Upgrade kits check them out its really quite simple you can do it in less then 2 hours. Prebuilts are overpriced imo. plenty of instructional vids on youtube.

 

[ozzy87 10+ year member]

ehh that's gettin a lil 2 much into something i don't know about man

 

[bigguy2010 10+ year member]

Little old but give it a good read:

http://www.monstercable.com/mpc/stable/tech/A2403_Current_And_Efficiency.pdf

 

[Lonnie 10+ year member]

Meh I love my Mechman lol. They messed up and sent me the wrong one first...then when I told em they sent the correct one and I had it in 3 days...had both alts lol. Sent me a shipping label for the other...the one they sent required being machined so I sent it back to them and they refunded me cost of shipping...they machined and sent it back in the same day...got it 3 days after they received it.

Mechman all the way!

Well plus it does help that they are in Knoxville and im in South Eastern KY

 

[SicAudio 5,000+ posts]

db's alts have done my business quite well

only had 1 bad 1 so far out of hundreds installed..

just make sure you have enough batteries ( at least 200AH worth if not more )

in fact I would do batteries first and then the alt... alot of people find that with good batteries they may not need the alt...

1 of my fairly recent experiences...

just had this issue with a customer that went thru 3 250 amp mechman alts 1 after the other and he only has 3kw RMS and multiple runs of 0/1 wire...

we dumped the HO alt and went with the stock alt and 3 120AH AGM batts and he never drops below 12 volts ever and no light dimming whatsoever even at full tilt with a stock 135 amp alt... in 6 months he burned up 3 $400 alts to the tune of $1200..... he spent $600 on the 3 batts and is still banging low 150's daily on that setup 12+ months later...

 

[SmartAsss 10+ year member]

Little old but give it a good read:
http://www.monstercable.com/mpc/stab...Efficiency.pdf

this was very relevant back in the day, but today with everyone running 1000's of watts, class d amps on the verg of clipping, Low ohm wiring configurations, lower output factory alternators. we need big nasty alternators. ... this guy is the one who gave everyone the idea to use capacitors. which was severely misunderstood by many ppl, even to this day.
SicAudio... your post just shows that mechman alts use rectifier diodes that cannot handle the heat that is caused by excess current draw from a high demand system. a combination of higher output current generated by the alternator and improperly sized rectifier diodes caused your failures.

The factory alt in use now has a better sized diodes and a lower output, so they do not heatup as much and destroy them selves when the current demand is high.

I would really like to have a discussion with you about this if you don't quite understand what I said above. I want to try to explain this to you why your having better luck with adding batteries then an actual alternator.