Fellow V8 Miata enthusiasts, if you were to go to a 3G alternator solution. Please stay away from the LOAD BOSS or Alterstart brand. I had my so-called 160A 3G alternator fail on me at 4k miles. What the hell is that?
They don’t even have their own domain name or advertise themselves very well. Here’s their URL to their storefront:
http://storesense1.mysuperpageshosting. … eFront.bok
Look at the lame URL………..Jeezums. Anything to do with Alterstart, one word: RUN like there was a bomb and your life depended on it.
Apparently, I am not the only person that is talking trash about this company. Google up reviews of Alterstart or Load Boss alternators. There’s a handful of pissed off customers. I just wish I did better research first and that’s probably the understatement of the day.
I had taken my piece of $@#& Load Boss alternator to a rebuilder and guess what? The rebuilder looked at how it was built, it was nowhere near the specifications of 160 amps. It was just some poorly assembled alternator that was capable of pushing, at best, 60-75 amps. No wonder my alternator died at 4k miles. Guys and ladies, I have a two battery set up in my trunk. There is immense demand for power that goes back to those batteries.
I had intentionally run down my secondary battery to 11.5 volts (relatively 20% capacity left) and let the alternator run for a while as I’m driving it to see how well it charges up while monitoring the amount of amperage going back. What do you know, a piss-poor performance. I was only seeing at most 45 amps going back at any given time, not more. Ah, ah, ah, before you say anything about “Well, you probably have an old-ass 8 gauge line going back.” Let me debunk that thought you might just had, I have two 4 gauge high quality audio power lines paired up directly from the Alternator to the battery. Regardless, that makes sense because I have other things happening that’s probably drawing the other 20-30 amps.
I bought another alterator from this same builder, a 3G 130A alternator and I had swapped the Load Boss with this no name brand rebuilt by this guy, Paul, by his own hands to exactly the 130A specs. Paul explicitly stated that 850 RPMs would yield 80A and at 1200 RPMs would yield the full 130A.
To my measurement, he was absolutely correct. I see almost 90-95A going back. Yipee. The alternator is also performing MUCH better too as compared to the piece of %@#$ Load Boss. I have him rebuilding my Load Boss one to a 200A 3G alternator now, the right way!
Load Boss/Alterstart, if you’re reading this, in your manuals, you claim it hits the 160A capability at 8000 RPMs. What the hell is that? About 0.5% of cars out there probably can hit 8000 RPMs. You guys are damn lucky that I’m not going to sue you guys for false advertising because I think I can do more damage by telling people what bogus company you guys are.
LoL dude your full of it it puts out 160a at around 2000 rpms or so.. stop bashing get over it they have a 2 year warranty i’ve replaced an alternator 5 times in one month… bad luck.. :/ good thing theres a warranty for defective parts dumbarse
The warranty is no good if the company won’t honor it. Besides that, you’re the dumbarse if you keep having to replace it five times in a month. Whatever happened to reliablity? Besides that, I got an alternator rebuilt by a local alternator shop and it puts out 90 at 650rpms and then 160 at 950 rpms. One year later, it works perfectly still. One less thing for me to worry about.