My F 350 King Ranch suffered two setbacks today. First was cracked wheel and the second was a catastrophic alternator failure with a fire to boot. Really can't tell what all it destroyed yet. Hopefully insurance will cover it. Has anyone else had a alternator failure like this?

 

Not me.

Single or Dual Alternators? 2008, 09 or 10? If an 08 was it Job 1, 2 or 3?

Pictures?

 

not me..hope it turns out ok.

 

2008 Job 1 with dual alternators. It was the secondary alternator.

 

I'd like to hear the outcome. I have a Job 2 09 with dual alternators.

 

Talked to local service manager this afternoon. Both alternators are junk along with the associated wire harness. Estimated at $1300 🙀

 

I wonder if this could be a warranty and/or recall/safety issue. Anyone ever hear of other dual alt fires?

 

no recall and have not really heard of any widespread failures.

Think over charge or something like that.

 

Kinda what the sm said. They put it on the ford network forum and it seem no one has ever heard of this before. My insurance of course denied the claim as mechanical failure because the was no actual flames. I tried to argue it but was like arguing with your wife. I told them next time it will burn to the ground before I lift a hand to stop it and it will cost them a hell of a lot more than $1300.

 

shouldn't have said that, if they document it and you do have another fire, chances are they will be claiming insurance fraud

 

That doesn't make sense to me. The bad alternator was the mechanical failure, but the subsequent fire is something that comprehensive would typically cover, and that is what destroyed your wiring harness and primary alternator. So I would think at least they would pay labor and parts to replace these minus your deductible.

But in the future I'd recommend staying calm and not making threats. That will do absolutely nothing to gain empathy and the support of the person on the other end of the line and could possibly be used against you in the future. That remark accomplished nothing but pissing off the claims rep and giving them reason to give you grief at a later point in time.

 

I bet one of your batteries failed, and cause a lower internal resistance, and put the charging system into a full or overload situation.

What I mean, is that the internals of the battery shorted out, causing it to become a 8 or 10 volt battery, thus causing the system to charge way beyond it's limits.

Take both batteries out, and get them tested.

 

Got it back today. $1100 total. Both batteries tested fine.

 

So did they indicate whether they were able to pin point the cause...other than an interal issue to the alternator itself?

 

They are saying it was just a failure of the diode. Every thing in the electrical system checked out on the computer. So it was isolated to just alternator failure. The diode is supposed to keep this from happening. It should have broken and would have kept it from burning itself up.