NHTSA Complaint #11690023 — 2022 MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER 2500

The secondary alternator on our 2023 Winnebago Revel failed and caught fire. Fortunately, it happened when the vehicle was stopped so the fire was quickly put out and the damage limited to the alternator itself and the belt that ran the alternator. Had the failure happened in motion, a broken belt could have completely disabled the van, possibly endangering other traffic. Had we not noticed and extinguished the fire immediately, it could have consumed the entire vehicle and spread to the surroundings. This issue of faulty secondary alternators is well-known to Winnebago. Our unit was a warranty replacement of the original and we had recall work done on it as recently as July 15. The recall work only involved changing settings on the alternator's regulator and did not address what is a failure mode of the hardware itself.