Can an alternator overcharge a battery?

[dom14]

Hi Cuppa,
Thanks for the very informative and helpful post. Yeah, I understand your point. I gotta draw a line somewhere how many spares I carry.
I may be overdoing certain things for my central Australian trips. I thought of carrying a spare head and a head gasket as well, which I already have it ready. That 'cos I wasn't sure my last head gasket job was done good enough for long trips, 'cos the head was not properly reconditioned by the machine shop. I reckon you can carry all these stuff and the diff or gearbox can fail, making everything even more expensive with carrying all the spare parts that doesn't help with the actual breakdown when it happens. I do carry, spare plugs, hoses, ignition coil, oil, water, battery, etc.
Spare secondhand alternator probably not going to add lot of extra weight, but I'd need to draw the line somewhere of course.
I reckon the best approach probably is to have the alternator reconditioned again and the cylinder head redone for the peace of mind, and etc etc, rather than carrying many heavy spare parts.

I guess there's no such thing as a safe trip.

Correct.
Depending upon where your long trip takes you, carrying a spare alternator is IMHO overkill. Perhaps not if your intention is to spend long periods of time away from any 'civilisation', but most towns will have some sort of access to an auto electrician/wreckers or whatever. When our bus's alternator died going up WA's north west coast, we found a replacement from a wrecker in Sydney & had it freighted to Broome. A patrol alternator would be much easier to source I think. You could carry a spare regulator, but there are basically two types, internal & external. Replacing an external one would be a fairly straightforward swap over, but an internal one not so easy. Of course it depends on what has caused the regulator to fail. Replacing a dead one may just result in the the replacement being killed too. I am no expert in these things, but seem to recall that the cause of our (internal) regulator's death was the alternator's plastic brush holder collapsing.
Perhaps Yendor might make further knowledgeable comment in case what I've written could be misleading?

Cuppa

Ps. I just noticed the 'big red' description of intended trip(s). Doesn't really change my thoughts though. We all need to carry basic spares, but where to stop? Spare alternator, spare turbo, spare motor, etc etc. The more you carry the greater the weight, increased stress on the vehicle, the higher the chance of some sort of failure. A difficult balancing act ..... But I doubt many folks carry spare alternators, just make sure they are happy that what they have is in good order before leaving.