Battery and alternator woes

[amneme1]

If you read my hijack of someone else's thread (sorry about that) you will see the woes I've had with this. Basically wifey has '10 LR4 with now 55K miles on it. Replaced the WP last winter and now the alternator this winter. Wife slumbered the vehicle home as it was shutting down voluntarily and fried the battery. I go and get a Sears AGM 49 as per many recommendations, and drive it to the dealer. After the AED was used to revive me, I paid the $700 aprox install of a rebuilt alternator vs an OEM which was $800 alone. Pick it up two to three days later and charging system lights up intermittently on the IP. I go back asking if the computer needs reset, service guy says no, checks the alternator and he says it's putting out steady voltage and blames the battery might have either a dead cell or an undercharged cell. Go back to Sears and take it out on a blustery winter day and the goons there say it checks out fine, so I hoax them into charging it for an hour anyhow. I call another dealer and post here in the other thread. Conclusive to the members here and other dealer, I have to reset the computer. So I wait till my next set of days off are (now) and take it back to first stealership and confront the service guy about my shade tree mechanical skills and the consensus I am getting that conflicts with his opinion and someone is lying. No loaner car btw. I'm at home and he emails my wife and tells her that an OEM alternator is like getting a liver from a live donor vs a rebuild is a liver from a cadaver. I blast him in an email calling ******** and if the alternator is the root cause, weather it's OEM or not, he better rethink who his supplier is. So after all this fuss the service guy calls me. He says that they installed a battery off the shelf, then replaced a battery module behind the negative post? From another vehicle, then he took out my alternator and reinstalled it in another vehicle to see if the problem comes up again. Needless to say, I still firmly believe all car dealers and salesmen are **** and bottom feeders. This whole experience has been awful and a big runaround for a relatively simple repair. I cc Land Rover direct and will patiently wait for their reply.


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[amneme1]

Back and forth with the dealer, rented a car for several days while they were tending to my truck. After they got done swapping parts, they offered me a loaner this time (LR2 replacement discovery sport, good upgrade for the lr2 but awful compared to the LR4. Drove that for three or four days while they further test my truck. Finally call me up and say they are willing to swap out the alternator for an OEM and their battery for my Sears AGM. I tell them I'll call back as that AGM cost me $200. I get to the dealer with the loaner and they say I can keep the AGM, the OEM alternator, and a new battery (interstate) in return for a good review of their services. I'm like *** (inside voice of course) did it take so long to figure it's the original alternators fault. I'm glad this is behind me but what a pain in the **** to get it done correctly


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[jaguardoc504]

I have a pretty good relationship with my dealer, then again i have never had a significant problem with my LR4 or my LR dealer.
My BMW dealer is another story, long story short. After 3 visits (over a 3 month period) for a vibration, which the "could not duplicate". I found the right side motor mount bolt broken. This is a very common problem, in fact BMW has a TSB out on it. They actually had the audacity to recommend a right side CV joint (with 2Kin other repairs to maybe fix the problem), because the boot was ripped, and they thought this might cause intermittent issues (aside from the fact the boot was ripped). BUT what they failed to notice was the reason for the rip, the CV joint was practically sitting on the subframe (this is also how i found out the MM bolts were broken). I have blasted the dealer on FB, Instagram, Twitter, and have been in contact with BMW NA many times. bottom line is the dealers do not know any better than an indy shop in most cases, and are just trying make a buck.

My problem is I live in Maine so my options are limited unless I want to drive 2.5 hours to Boston for a selection of dealers.

Glad they found the problem... maybe.