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It is a little unfortunate that Saab did not choose to keep the voltage readout as part of the SID display as they had done on the 9000. You have no idea what is going on in the charging system except for a light that indicates the alternator is not working.
Not to beat this to death, but the greatest likely hood here is that you have had a string of failures that have nothing to do with your car, just bad odds. This is reinforced by virtue of the fact that both recent failed units have been rebuilt.
There is little your car can do to an alternator to cause it to fail. It does depend on an unblocked access to air in order for the fan behind the pulley to keep it cool. An alternator puts all of its ouput through diodes which help protect it from overload and reverse current.
If you really want to know what is going on, have a shunt installed on the alternator output and a voltmeter and ammeter set up in the car. Then you can read voltage right at the alternator, at the battery and in the car's system. You can also read the actual amount of current the alternator is putting into the cars' electrical system. This information would provide you with assurance that the car itself is not causing issues that would cause damage to the alternator. For instance if you have a 115amp alternator the ammeter should show that you never would use that much current, except prehaps briefly after a stressful very cold startup. You would see how much current was used with all the lights and fans etc in operation and that would be prehaps 50 amps. If you continiously require 110 amps to operate the car, then yiou would be causing the alternator to produce more heat, but nonetheless it should not fail.
Sorry for the long response, but if you do not want to get involved in the background of what is happening just replace the alternator.
Bill
posted by 74.67.28...
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