Made it Back to Atlanta With a Big Bump in the Road

Dodge City was a bit of a disappointment in more ways than one.  As I said it was just somewhere to stop since we could only get 2 nights in Cheyenne Mountain State Park.  We had high hopes when we pulled into what looked like a brand new KOA, all paved, huge concrete sites, and lots of room, but when night came and the lights came on, wow, like being in an arena for a night football game or even perhaps an operating room, it was intense!  And the noise from the nearby grain elevator never stopped.  But the downtown looked interesting, huge area was all brick streets, and maybe when the Covid has abated, we'd come back and walk around to check it all out, but we would look for another campground, too much light for us.

So the next day we headed south to Oklahoma City on our way to Fort Worth.  We were happily motoring along at about 60 mph when we heard a ding, what was that?  I look down and I have a message, "low voltage", the ABS light comes on along with a bunch of other lights, I look at the voltmeter and it is reading less than 12, it normally reads 14.  It hits me we have lost our alternator, so I try to start the generator, but there isn't enough voltage, so I drive and hold our battery boost switch down to combine our chassis batteries with our house batteries,  Jan hits the generator start switch, and it cranks up.  We have what is called a Big Boy solenoid on our coach, when I held down the battery boost switch it combines the two banks of batteries through the Big Boy, and then if on shore power or generator power which directly charges the house batteries, when they get to 13.3 volts, the Big Boy closes and allows the chassis batteries to charge, and when you are driving and the alternator is charging the chassis batteries, when they get to 13.3, it closes and allows the alternator to charge the house batteries.  So when we started the generator, and the voltage got up to above 13.3, it allowed the generator to keep our chassis batteries up enough to drive and provide enough power to keep the engine running.  We did pull off the road to try to make sure we lost the alternator and not just some unknown fuse.  I couldn't find anything so we pressed on to Mustang Run RV Park in Oklahoma City.  It was a very nice park, all paved roads and sites, lots of room, and as it turned out, dark at night:-)  But we had our minds on the alternator.

I started researching everything I could on my go to forums, Monacoers, IRV2, and Facebook's Monaco Owners Group.  And got some differing opinions, some feel rebuilding is the only way to go, and refer to horror stories about buying a new alternator only to have many and expensive electrical problems on their coach.  Digging deeper I felt most if not all of these people were unable to get the exact model alternator as they had on their coach.  Then the others explained they went new, with a warranty, and had no problems at all.  They said one of the problems with a rebuild is, if it goes bad for some reason hundreds if not thousands of miles away, what are they going to do, besides most rebuilders only warranty their work for 90 days.  I looked on my alternator for the model info and it was long gone, understand this alternator is OEM, and is probably 14 years old with 163,000 miles!  I guess I can't complain about it failing too soon:-)  I dug into my paperwork and found an exact model number. I have a Leece Neville A0014951PA 200 amp unit.  I found an alternator shop in town and ran over to find out what they could tell me, all the phones and electric were still out there from a big ice storm that had come through a couple days previously, actually the same storm that I showed pictures of on our way.  They had a rebuilt alternator with a similar number but it ended in PGH for $600, but said they would sell it for $500 with a 90 day warranty, or they could get me a brand new PGH for $850 in a day.  And since they didn't have any power they would be unable to rebuild my alternator.  I said I'd think about it.  I came back and read some more and decided to call the manufacturer and ask about the model numbers, they told me that PA was replaced by PGH and they were the same.  About that time another member of a forum stated that he had bought his alternator from AJ Electric for a fair price, it was an exact replacement, and was extremely satisfied.  I decided to call them.  I got a knowledgable and pleasant person on the line, he told me after about a minute that he had a brand new replacement with my exact number, the PA, it would be $485, and he could ship it in 30 minutes!  I said okay, went second day air, and had it sent to our daughter in Fort Worth.  We fired up the generator and limped down to DFW.

We stay at an exceptional campground in Grapevine, TX called The Vineyards.  It is one of our all time favorites.  The grounds are beautiful, sites are large and well spaced out, it is tended to and kept clean and tidy, all paved roads and big sites right on Grapevine Lake.  It is in a convenient location between Fort Worth and Dallas, and the traffic isn't too bad getting in and out.  Our reason for going to DFW was see our daughter Kelly and her husband Brian.  We got into our site we reserved and even though it was across from a big playground we never thought there'd be any kids there in the middle of the week in early November, boy, were we wrong!  Seemed like a hundred kids yelling, screaming, running through our campsite, just being kids, don't get the wrong idea.  But with this new resurgence of people RVing, doing that instead of something else during Covid, 90% of them are newbies and don't understand simple campground etiquette.  Kelly and Brian showed up a little later and we didn't think much more about it.  Well when the loud activities resumed at 0700am, we decided to see if there was another site available, and there was!  In fact it was the site we initially wanted, but was reserved.  So a little later when it was vacated we moved over.  Ah, peace in the valley:-)  

There is a great sushi restaurant nearby and since Kelly and Brian also love sushi, we got their order and Jan and I went and picked up a stupendous lunch.  You knew there had to be food pictures...

Kelly and Brian arriving in her slightly modded Jeep:-)

The Ahi tower which is mixed all together and eaten with fried wonton chips

Jan opted for a Bento box with Korean beef

Kelly and Brian's feast

And mine!

We all enjoyed our fabulous food and a wonderful long visit after lunch.  Another wonderful thing about this campground is you can wash and boy did our coach need it after the slush and snow, so the next day Jan and I got after it.  I fiddled with the steps a little more but if anything they were worse as the fuse would blow the instant I put it in.

So early afternoon rolled around and Kelly and Brian came back for drinks and our final dinner together with our alternator!  We had a great time and a great dinner as the sun went down.

Brian and Kelly

A beautiful evening and great company

Brian and Kelly

A gorgeous sunset!

So Jan and I debated whether we should try to put the alternator in immediately or wait until Atlanta.  I had studied it ad nauseam and thought it looked very straightforward, but we've been at that point before when that 2 hour job morphs into all day.  We both felt we would feel a lot better with a working alternator, rather than depending on the generator, and since we still had 850 miles to go, we would tackle it.  

Access looked pretty good to get it out, and we figured once we got it loose we should then be able to tip it up to get the wires off the back.  First we had to remove power from the coach, we unplugged, turned off both the house and chassis battery switches, and checked for no power, we still had power?  So off came the negative cables from both banks of house batteries and the negative from the chassis battery, and I remembered to pull the solar panel fuse.  Success, no power.  Then we removed the serpentine belt to gain access to the alternator.

Removing the negatives

The belt in place, and you can see the two bolts at the top and bottom that hold it

We did really well, one challenge to all this is the alternator is big, heavy, and unwieldy, so it did take a bit of juggling.

The new one

With the mirror you can see the 2 connections on the back of the alternator,
we got these off after we got the alt loose and tipped forward

Out!

Now the new alternator does not come with a pulley, you need to take the pulley off the old one and put it on the new one.

Exactly the same

No pulley

The old one with pulley

Piece of cake, insert an allen, and loosen with a wrench

WRONG!  I drenched it in PB Blaster, pounded on it, stood on it, got a long lever and jumped on it, but there was no way we could get the pulley off.  I decided to call an alternator shop and asked them if I could bring it to them and they could get the pulley off for me, they said of course, and off I went, an hour later I was back with the pulley off and only cost me $10 bucks.  Putting the pulley back on was easy, and even getting the wires hooked up and getting it mounted wasn't bad at all.

All in

Getting the belt in place

We checked everything, hooked up the batteries, threw on the switches, and cranked it up.  It ran smooth, belt looked great, no vibration, and best of all, 14 volts!  Success.  Buttoned everything up, and off we went.

We took 2 days to get to Atlanta, uneventful, the voltage never varied from 14 volts!  Now we have some appointments here and need to get a few things done as well as tackle the steps, before we head to Florida for the winter.