Hey seafarer you being a touareg mechanic how about 4 weeks so far for a alternator swap on my v10 and still not back , saying alternator not available any more and now its a replacement with $600 worth of mounting brakets. Grrrrrrrr
Hey mark,
The "Touareg Mechanic" is a title that the Club Touareg administration award by some criteria that no one seems to knows, probably something to do with length of time on Ct and number of posts.......nothing to do with being a mechanic in actual terms so will leave your statement about the alternator swap to someone knowledgeable with V10's to answer.
Re my tongue in cheek comment about your 2x 500Ah batteries was my attempt to draw attention to the amount of power required to keep them charged, I see you subsequently changed the battery capacities to 2x100Ah which is closer to the norm.
If you are thinking of going to solar charging my thoughts are that you don't go to the expense of adding solar panels to the roof of your van as they will not give you most bang for your buck as normally you would park your van under some shade so the roof panels will not be very efficient nor will generate optimum power because of being in partial shade and the panels will not be ideally aligned with the sun.
My suggestion is that you invest in a couple of 120w or 160w high efficiency (19+%) folding panels with an appropriate MPPT controller which should bring in around 10+Ah each which would be enough to charge your batteries and will work better for you that roof mounted panels of the same size.
I have 3x125W panels on my van roof but still carry 2x80W and 1x120W portables to keep my 2x150Ah AGM batteries charged as my van is all 12V except for cooking.
TonyB