Dying Alternator on my Commander CRD??

[Hanna]

About a month back I was doing some site visits and meetings in Port Hedland (about 250km from home) and when I pulled into our client's car park I suddenly had no reverse gear. I tried turning the engine off and on again, but still no reverse. So I parked it in forward and left it whilst I went to meeting. After my meeting (around 1.5hrs later) I started it up and reverse gear returned, so I pretty much knew it had to be an electrical/computer issue. I drove all the way back to Karratha without issue and parked it for the night.

The following morning I jumped in and hit the key and there was nothing. I hooked my 8 stage battery charger up and even when it was in bulk charging mode (14.4V) it still wouldn't start. I checked the battery terminals and the positive terminal was heavily corroded, so I gave it a good clean up and left it to charge properly overnight. Since then, all has been good in Commander World, until yesterday....

I was towing a trailer home at night when I received a phone call from a client, so I pulled over to take it. The phone call went for about 30min and I left the car idling with the lights on and the A/C on the whole time so that I didn't have to sit in the stinking humidity. All of a sudden the HVAC fan went up to full speed and the air it was blowing out was really hot. The HVAC/fan controls wouldn't work at all, so I had to turn the engine off. When I tried to restart it the battery was dead. After a jump start from my wife I took it home and put it on charge, but the battery must have been pretty dead as it hadn't even reached the float charge stage by morning.

My battery is about 2.5 years old and this is the first sign of any issue whatsoever and given that it just went completely flat whilst sitting there idling for 30min indicates to me that it is probably the alternator that's stuffed. From my experience in the past you can get away with a stuffed battery in a running car as long as your alternator is good. I have not heard of a battery dying like that whilst the car is running. My Commander has done 170,00kms and I assume that it's the original alternator.

Over to the experts - what do you reckon?

[Clarky]

From personal experience when the alternator go's the battery light comes on.

[Hanna]

Originally Posted by Clarky

From personal experience when the alternator go's the battery light comes on.

Ah, OK....

What do you reckon then? Dead battery? Or something worse?

[OzRick25]

check your alternator with a multimeter. What type of battery?
Pretty sure the commander has a regulated charge controller and batrery temp sensor might be wrong? If so this could be the culprit either by your vehicle being too hot or it being faulty

[07commander]

Strange like clarky said when it dies the light should come on, the car runs on the alternator for it to go flat like is strange but if a plate gets to low on voltage or water it will bend and get close or even touch one of the other plates which will cause a dead cell, a dead cell can cause a battery to go from charged to flat at a drop of a hat.

Hopefully thats all thats wrong with yours 2 years aint bad should last longer but who knows, have you scanned for codes?

[Hanna]

It's just a standard lead acid battery with something like 700CCA's.

I will give it a code scan shortly after dinner and see what comes up. Hopefully just a dead cell.

[07commander]

Originally Posted by Hanna

It's just a standard lead acid battery with something like 700CCA's.

I will give it a code scan shortly after dinner and see what comes up. Hopefully just a dead cell.

Lead acid are good at dropping cells, a stuffed battery won't throw a code but you will have a heap of low voltage codes, if you have a electrical fault that would more than likely throw a code.