1st Degree Felony Alternator Abuse

This is great. Thank you. Does the alternator provide any kind of constraint?

 

It sounds like a couple phones and a tablet and the radio should be fine then?

I just dont want to overtax my alternator (I have the smaller, non-tow package one and I guess one decision point here is whether to swap it out with the two package one)

 

That's a great question and I'm not sure. I know there are alternators with resettable breakers or thermal fuses but I've never seen one on a car/truck so I would hedge my bet toward no. The alternator is controlled by a computer on these trucks, so there may be some safety in the software that cuts it out before it melts itself, but I'm really not sure and would assume no.

 

The only thing to be aware of is that you’re running a ton of stuff at idle, the alternator may not keep up since they don’t typically put out much at idle. But you’re a long way from there.

Beyond that, there isn’t much to worry about with the alt. They can charge the battery at their full current capacity, which isn’t great for them if it happens often, and there are plenty of other protections built in.

 

For what your doing I wouldn't worry about the alternator, personally. Just make sure the wiring you run is sized correctly for the worst case scenario plus some margin and then fuse it so that the wiring can never be pushed to it's max current capacity.

There are wiring size charts for 12/24v systems easily found online. With DC voltage, the length of the wiring makes a difference since the internal resistance of the wiring goes up with the length. For example, a 16AWG wire 2' long can carry quite a lot of current, but if it's 50' long it's current capacity is reduced enough to make a difference. The charts have all that stuff taken into account and usually on vehicles like our truck is not much difference because they just aren't big enough to need really long wiring runs, but in things like large aircraft it makes a big difference. I always go up at least one size on the wiring over the chart minimum size for the load, personally.

 

I run a 100 watt HF radio (one of 3 different radios) in mine full TX maybe 17-20 amps but the duration is not real long USB stuff is low current.