Reading my email at the office this AM, found a new offering from International Rectifier. They have a new regulator mechanism that gets built into the alternator. Similar to the ones used for years except now there is a serial communication link between the alternator and bcm/ecu modules.
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So, in the years to come, diagnosing a bad alternator gets either more complicated or easier depending on what tools will be available. My big beef with the diagnostic tools that are available to us vehicle owners is that they only will read codes (and signals on the more elaborate readers). There is nothing that will allow you to perform actuator tests (read only and no write control).
Oppie