It appeared to be an internal fault on the VR. I was concerned that a low resistance on the "battery light" terminal could have killed the VR since all the how to test videos are sure to caution that if you short that terminal not through a lamp you can kill the VR.

I opened the failed bosch rebuilt and it looked perfect inside, I suspect a bad lot of VR to blame and can't really blame the builder unless they used non Bosch VR in the rebuild.

Anyhow I'm a big fan of Bosch but would take a lot of convincing for me to use another Bosch alternator. When your car is out of commission 3 weeks and you finally get time to fix it and it dies again after 20 minutes that's a tough one to get over.

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2011 E70 • N55 (me)
2012 E70 • N63 (wife)