CM871 things to check after purchase?

[Rawze]

I got my truck brand new from the factory. It had a 165 amp alternator on it. I replaced it with a 225 amp when the truck was still fairly new. The 225 held up for more than 800,000 miles of abuse by a 4,000 watt inverter microwave, fridge, etc.

When my truck was purchased, it was done so by a fleet that got 500 trucks in one order. They all had same size alternator (165), were standard fleet spec'd, and none of them seemed to have much problems with them.

With the headlights on and A/C running, a truck will only require about 85 amps from the alternator. -- 325 is usually overkill in most applications unless you have a lot of extra power use. Perhaps he had a bad run of the smaller alternartors? or perhaps a bad run of batteries? who knows for sure. -- I can only tell what my own experience was with it. I have also run my truck for several days at a time with just the 120-amp alternator on the APU unit. Here recently to get the truck home when it went out this time for good,.. and a long time ago when my starter was replaced, and a wire broke a couple days later because of a faulty connector. Truck ran fine for several days, though we did not use the Inverter for those days. We waited until after we delivered our load to get it fixed.

To properly install a 325 amp alternator on a prostar, you will also need to replace the fusible-link (or remove it all together) located in the line just before the starter for that much amperage too if you plan on getting the full 325 amps to the system and down to a big inverter. otherwise, it will eventually melt it and brake the link. I have seen this a few times on other peoples trucks.

13.6 Volts DC is 13.6 Volts DC. Unless you have an alternator that is very noisy, producing spikes or has A/C current spewing out of it. My prostar runs just fine from 14.0 VDC to all the way down to 11.8 VDC with no issues. I know this very well. Below 11.6, the truck throws codes low voltage, and that is when my wife reached back and turned on the APU. it ran for 3 days (day and night both, she didn't shut it off at all) on its little 120-amp alternator while she got delivered and then drove home. voltage stayed at 13.4 on the small alternator wiuth the headlights on, and during the day, it was 13.7