2001 3500 Van intermittant no charge

[kibblesret]

My 2001 doge 3500 van sometimes does not charge. Most times if I turn it off, wait a few minutes and start the van it will charge. I checked the battery with a meter when it shows no charge and indeed there is none. When the guage shows a charge above the 14 volt line there is a charge as the guage says.
This has been happening more and more. Any help would be appreciated.

[alloro]

1. The belt is slipping.
2. Bad alternator.
One of these is likely your problem.

[kibblesret]

Originally Posted by alloro

1. The belt is slipping.
2. Bad alternator.
One of these is likely your problem.

Hey thanks for the quick reply!
I would agree with the belt slipping if the van overheated as well. it doesn't.
In the old days if an alternator was bad it simply never produced any voltage, mine does at times. I have checked that it does. Okay if the brushes were sticking in sometimes they popped out and the alternator "got better all of a sudden" but that was and is so rare that I doubt it's that. An open in the windings or a bad diode pack just does not heal up so once again it seems there is no way the alternator would be on and off again.
You used to be able to full field an alternator to check that it was working but I think that doing this on a system with the regulator in the PCM that the procedure my cause more problems. Does anyone know a procedure you can use to check the alternator at home? Like on the van?
Funny thing is once the van is warm if I stop the engine and wait a few seconds before starting again the alternator produces a proper charge. It's like if the PCM is warm the voltage regulator works.
Does anyone know if the current code readers will differentiate a problem between the alternator and the PCM based voltage regulator?

[alloro]

Originally Posted by kibblesret

Hey thanks for the quick reply!
I would agree with the belt slipping if the van overheated as well. it doesn't.

Incorrect. The belt only slips around the alternator pulley, so everything else like the power steering and water pump are not affected. I know this because I had this same problem when I first bought my van. It was worse when cold and almost never happened when it was warmed up. I had a new alternator and a new belt and it still slipped intermittently. I ended up changing the tensioner to solve the problem.

I think it happens because the alternator pulley is too small and doesn't have enough pulley to belt surface area. If you look at all of the other pulleys driving accessories you can see that they're much larger, which is why they don't slip so easily.