Had a few spare minutes to work on a van tonight. I posted earlier that 220A Valeo alternator gets excited on AXK idle RPMs. And it does... when engine is cold and starting RPMs go into 800-850 range. Here's not so good news - when engine is hot and idle RPMs are not crossing 600-650 range, Valeo alternator doesn't get excited. I sorta suspected that it might need a bit higher RPMs, but wait - here's good news - when you step on a gas pedal to bring RPMs up to 800-850 range it gets excited and it **STAYS** excited until engine is shut off.
I don't mind to help it to get excited when starting hot engine, but... here's not so good news - I lost "LOW BATTERY VOLTAGE" indication on the dashboard. So I have no clue whether it's excited or not unless I measure it's voltage output, which is not practical in the field.
I'm pretty sure that I'm using the correct terminal for exciter wire (Valeo alternator has two terminals on it;s connector, but only one - the same as on Bosch unit - produced output voltage). Measuring it;s output shows that it';s around 11V when it's **NOT** excited and around 13V when it is. I ran additional positive and negative 2AWG wires directly from alternator to the battery, so when alternator delivers 14.3V to battery, it reads around 13V on exciter wire, so there's voltage drop. I know that EuroVan is using LED in the dashboard for low battery indicator light. Maybe it doesn't have enough resistance? I can try to put additional passive load in series to this LED to increase voltage drop if it can help it... but I'm curious what voltage reading in on exciter wire with Bosch alternator? I guess it might be different enough so indicator LED works with Bosch unit... Any ideas?
-albertr