I wondered if you got a bad alternator. Back when I was purchasing the cheap "lifetime" alternators I went through 8 or 9 of them in a 10 year period. A couple were bad right out of the box. Switching to the Denso rebuilds (actually rebuilt by Denso) solved the problem. Since switching I've been running the same alternator for the past 5 years / 50k miles with no issues. Charging problems suck. Glad you got it handled. Tim