Isuzu Trooper Owners Club UK™

[genhinds]

Hi all,

I just had a nightmare road trip.

Rodeo 2002 3 Ltr Turbo Diesel - awesome truck with 373,000 kms and normally never misses a beat.

Drove 400kms to Sydney and went perfectly but once I got there I started to have some belt squeal and twice the battery was flat when I tried to start.

Set off home and about 100kms in I started to lose power and the check engine light came on...  It developed a sound that was kind of a grindy fast tapping rattle...  When I slowed down to 60 kph the engine light went off and the sound went away.  I thought it might be a tappet noise and stopped at a service station and added some oil and let the truck idle for a while (I wasn't game to turn it off) and came out of the servo it went OK but I took it easy.  Then after about 50kms it came back much worse.  I stopped again, turned it off to let it cool a bit and it wouldn't start again, zero charge in a relatively new heavy duty battery- got a jump and it idled perfectly even sounded fine when revved up.  Set off again and the nasty sound was back very quickly.  Night was falling and the lights were really dim.  Then it started to kind of surge and release, the tacho stopped working, and the speedo needle was jumping around, I had very little power and it was kangaroo jumping up the freeway.  Pulled over, turned off all the electricals, let it idle for 15 mins (still a lovely idle and no prob when revving) and it seemed to put a charge back into the battery when on idle...  When I set off again it was perfect for about 5 minutes before the sound came back and the power was reduced again.  Ended up stopping about 5 times to let it charge up again and drove 200 kms at about 65 kph but my awesome truck did manage to get me home.

HERE IS MY QUESTION (sorry I took so long to get to it)

Is it possible that a failed alternator or something else in the electrical system could be causing all these problems?  I don't want to sink a pile of money into an electrical problem if I also have a major engine problem (my initial fear).  Can an electrical issue cause engine power surges and losses?

I would be super grateful for any help you can give.

I've long been a reader/follower of this forum but this is my first post

[Google]

[eithan h]

sounds like alternator and they are starting to get common on the rodeos now they have done some miles, if the voltage is getting low then at around 5 volts a lot of sensors are going to stop working so it will make the engine behave weird

[genhinds]

The alternator is incredibly expensive unfortunately but if the rest of the engine is still OK I'm really lucky.

thanks for the response