OK, what should have been a simple alternator change has turned into a fiasco with the local Toyota service department.
Three weeks ago the alternator starts to fail on a trip to Sydney from the Gold Coast, car dies at Hexham 160 kms from my destination. The NRMA guy tells me the alternator is not putting out enough volts to charge until it is revved at which point it is charging but he reckons it will be dead shortly.
Long story short, I have a LOT of important things to do so I push on to Sydney and the car gets there fine with the battery charge light out all the way.
While driving around Sydney of a night time I find all I have to do is knock the gearbox into neutral and keep the revs up to keep the alternator charging the battery and the light stays out.
The car gets me all the way home and then I send it to the local Toyota service people to have the alternator swapped out, this is done but now the battery light is on all the time.
New battery is fitted, still the light is on, another alternator is fitted, putting out 13.8V at idle but still the battery charge light is on.
They reset the ECU codes to put the light out but no good.
Now they are saying that possibly there was a surge or spike that went through the system and fried a wire ............. if this happened then it was them that did it.
Has anyone ever seen this before as I know it was fine when I put it on the back of a truck to be sent to the service people because I had to put another battery in and the car started fine and all the lights were out.
Are the Lexus people the only one that can fix this ??