NHTSA Complaint #11626738 — 2022 WINNEBAGO EKKO

The Winnebago factory installed secondary alternator (manufactured by Balmar) responsible for charging the batteries in my motorhome started to whine and overheat. Luckily the week prior, I had read about another EKKO owner experiencing the same symptoms before it created enough smoke that caused the driver to immediately pull off the road and extinguish the engine bay with a fire extinguisher. In an effort to avoid that, I disconnected the Balmer until it was able to be replaced. This original problem was supposed to be addressed in recall 174. Over a year later the recall supposedly addressed the issues by moving the regulator out of the engine bay, replacing the Balmer and a major reworking of the electrical system. After multiple components failed during the recall repair, my EKKO took over 6 weeks to get a working solution at a Winnebago dealership. That was a year ago. 10 days ago the same symptoms of whining and overheating returned resulting in me returning to the same dealer with them diagnosing the Balmer as defective and a health risk. Had I not disconnected the Balmer it would’ve overheated and resulted in melting the primary drive belt and potentially damaging the engine and other major components as documented by numerous other EKKO owners.