Having a variable charging rate is important for equalising battery banks. You cant just whack 100 amps in all the time.Have you had experience with battery banks?[/quote]
No automotive self regulated alternator does that, particularly not the kind I am talking about. Have you any knowledge of how self regulated alternators work.? They have been mainstream on vehicles since at least the '70's. ANY practical experience or testing of an alternator built in the last 20 -25 years? Sure does not sound like it. While it's all well and good to live in the past and cling to the old ways, some new things have made great improvements and are worth embracing and taking advantage of.
I have over 35 years of it. The control over current is important. Reduced current extends belt and alternator bearing life, this should be obvious.
This seems ironic that you are saying that you need to have control over current yet you feel a simple High/ Low charge rate is better than the infinitely variable rate given by a self regulated alternator.
The units I was talking about will do a lot better than simply high and low. You can achieve that by switching the field wire from the regular connections to positive on the battery. This ups the field current and increases the output. Very easy to see when you run an amp meter on the alt. As I described, you can also turn the things right off using the 3rd wire on the connector. O(f course then you can under drive them as you are doing as well. More control on these newer alts than the old type you are championing. and of course you can still wire them up for manual or external control as I have also said.
Self regulated alts taper off at around 14 volts. Deep cycle banks will not charge like this. They need to go to 14.8, and then take a finishing charge at a lower current. Without a posh controller, its easy just to cut the charge rate by throwing a switch. Fortunately, batteries are quite dumb, and will take amps from anyone or anything , they dont care whether they are new amps or old amps, they are good like that.Please tell me precisely and what physical parameters take place so that reduced current and subsequent longer charge times extend belt life. It is anything but obvious to me so I would appreciate your insight on this to educate and change my position on it. And to clarify the importance of this, Please tell me how much life you would get from a belt and bearings when the current is reduced over running them normally. What does a belt and bearings cost for the alts you use ? I'm keen to be able to make a factual assesment of the savings that can be realised in reducing current for this purpose. If you could give the reduced and direct charge rates, it would also be interesting to see the difference in needed run times to make up for the reduced output.
As the load on the engine increases with increasing demand, loading of the belt increases, belt slip increases, bearing side loads increase. Thats why high power requires multiple or wider belts. High current is used for the bulk charge, lower current for the finishing charge, even lower current for a float charge and something else for an equalising charge to keep the batteries in good condition. Try google, it will explain things better than i can..
Alternators are NOT continously rated,
Umm yes, they absoloutley are in the modern types as they need to be with all the electrical loads a modern vehicle has. Not like the old days where they had lights and a demister and 35A was fine to get you around. Nothing unusual for modern alts to do 200A and plenty now go to and beyond 300A. Loads of everyday passenger vehicles have 200A alts not to mention the plethora of SUV and real 4WD's which are far from rare or difficult or expensive to obtain used parts for. As I described. I have run the things Overloaded for days and still can't make them pop. Thats one reason why they now have efficient twin fans built in.
In any case, you are saying you can't pump 100A into battery banks all the time so why is this a concern?
Alternators do not supply full current continuosly in a vehicle. Either the battery load decreases, the ECU shuts back the alternator, or the internal regulator will cut it back. Alternators are chosen so as not to be overrun in an application. Did you even bother to look at that site I gave you? When using for bank charging, they are run full out for extended periods. Its a concern with large battery banks because 150 amps equates to a trickle charge in my setup. I have over 1000 ampere hours of battery storage here, the alternator is working hard to keep up, despite normally having two in parallel giving out an average of 150 amps over several hours each day. The automotive electronics are not up to this kind of duty. ... this is welding current... certainly not a "walk in the park" as you say.
Yes, the automotive electronics in MODERN ( 30+yo designs may be different) ARE up to this very easily. That's what they have separate cooling fans and separate the air flow into 2 parts, to make them more durable.
80A is also welding current and so is 200 which many alternators which are doing over 300A now will do. I think you would do well to bring yourself up to date on what is available and being done these days. It's a lot different to the old tech you want to cling to and all the associated problems. With a bank like 100 KwH, 2 modern alts would keep up full output before they started tapering off their charge rates to protect the batterys. If you are charging that now at 50 amps, either the depth of discharge isn't much and would be quickly made up by a couple of modern alts or you are running your present system for days at a time. Yes, you could easily keep them at higher charge rates if you wanted simply by manipulation of the field and sense wires and they would put out the FULL current as long as you needed it to or boiled your batteries.
I dont have access to modern high current alternators, most of us dont have fathers with a wrecking yard. else i would use them. I use what I can get.The original A section belt is not enough , I use easy to obtain C section..... remembering the theme here is cheap and easy.
Firstly, car belts are NOT " A " belts. If this is what you are using or comparing, this is another place you are going wrong. This is the sort of mistake that undermines what you are saying. You are not talking fact, you are making misinformed assumptions. No, an A belt may not be enough which is why the belts on cars are not in fact A section. I am really surprised you don't know this given all the experience you claim. This mistake does shed light on other things you say however.
Sadly, pretty much all cars I get alternators from use A or similar B section Vee belts. Im sorry, but thats how it is... If you were able to comprehend what I said, I actually mentioned Micro Grove belts as being easy to run straight off flywheels and the picture I put up clearly showed a flat pulley which is for micro grove belts. If you looked up the HP rating for these belts, you would see they far outdo that of V belts. You would also see they are much more efficient at transferring power with lower transmission losses and greatly extended life. That's why they use them and have gone away from V belts.
Also being used very widely on vehicles for well over 20 years now, you will also realise they are not hard to get and at least as easy as V belts in automotive places. They are no more expensive and in fact getting one for my daughters car recently was cheaper than the V belt I got for my own at the same time at the same place. Yes, Cheap and easy as you said with better efficiency and longer life thrown in. What more could you want?
Lucky you.
Removing the regulator prevents the alternator reducing the current at the 14 volt level, again necessary when dealing with deep cycle storage. Alternators will put out over 100 volts, but at very little current. That is not relevant here, we simply need to get around the 15v mark to equalise, and the 17/18 volts to force a sulphated battery to take current.
And, as I said, giving the field wire full battery voltage will bump the voltage output. I have tested this to over 16V many times. I can't say I have seen 17V+ but then that's a modification you can do just as you have done with what you are using. This could be done without even opening he alt up by just putting some Diodes or a resistor in the sense wire which would fool the alt into thinking the batt voltage was lower than it way and would up the output. I have done this also but not to that voltage as I had no need for it using good batteries.
.... ummm no it wont as standard. The peak output voltage is determined by the regulator, the field current is controlled by the regulator, the voltage varies slightly by the sense wire, the internal regulator will reduce the voltage depending on what the sense wire indicates. The sense wire cancels the drop between alt and battery terminal. Buggering with the sense wire ill alter the voltage very little. Your tests use the alternator at its regulated design parameters, of course it will go the distance. Remove the regulator, connect a large discharged battery bank and then see how you go. Christ, they are probably even current limited knowing modern electronics....
Again, had you been able to comprehend what I wrote, you would see I specifically tested the alts outside their normal operation. That was the point of the tests, to see what they could take and what would make them blow. You seem to be jumping from one thing to another here. First you are saying you can't pump 100A into the things all the time then much else what you say is basically trying to achieve high charge and voltage rates.
As far as removing the regulator and connecting a large battery bank, I'm prepared to do that on one or a pair of my alts and put up a vid of it if you will. I will GAURANTEE the alts I am talking about will still be going with their twin fan cooling and higher charge rates long after your old pet dinosaur units have long let out all the magic smoke. I'm prepared to put money into escrow to prove it, are you?
Lets also run them energised direct to a load with no battery and energised completely open circuit and see which one survives the longest. I can tell you, the new ones won't pop under these conditions. They designed that fault out out of them a long time ago.
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No you didnt. The alternators being factory originals were regulated and therefore current limited within their design ratings. You loaded them just as they would be in a car. Im interested in charging batteries, not entering into a "my alternator is better than your alternator "competition....Alternators here from a car wrecker sell for around the $50 mark.... I wish you could send me some of yours.... the price sounds very attractive. We tend to keep our cars for 20 to 30 years... mine is hitting 40, we are not so much a throw away society as you.
Sorry, I can pretty much only laugh at this. I can send you as many as you want, but frankly, it's pretty clear you'd be too tight arsed to pay the shipping on them.
I don't know if you are living back in the 70's or beyond but you seem to think $50 is some great deal of money. It's less than a family of 4 spend at McDonalds for a feed when they drop in after watching Johnny play footy or Marys Dancing lessons of a weekend. It's one tank of fuel in a smaller vehicle. To make out it is such an expense for a part that WILL give you years of service to fill basic modern needs is nothing short of ridiculous.
You are either a complete scrooge, pretending to be one for the sake of argument or a Hypocrite in that you spend this amount of money and more on other things which are purely indulgences and have no lasting vlaue. Like Drink, smokes or Gambling to name some. I have found over and over that people that come across usually tight with money do so in order to finance other things that cost more but they don't even take into account. Not saying you do this, but I am saying if you think $50 for an alternator to charge your battery bank even if you replaced it every year is such a great investment, one of the 3 things I mentioned is at undeniably at play.
I would LOVE to buy your alternators...they sound lovely alternators too. Unfortunately shipping would be prohibitive with GST , import duty and other taxes. We dont have the luxury of $3 alternators. You must live in america.....Coming from someone that lives in the most throw away society on the planet, that's completely laughable. If you think using alternators that are 20 years old constitutes a throw away society mentality, there's not much I can convey to you with any level of intelligence you'd comprehend. The fact you drive a near 40 yo vehicle says a lot though. No doubt you are of the position that Carburettors and distributors are more reliable than Fuel injection and computer control and everything new is rubbish. Ironic given you are using a computer to write this on the internet.
It's this kind of out of date, living in the past selective thinking that explains a lot with what you are saying.
I live in New Zealand if thats any help. My car gets serviced regularly, takes me all of 1 hour to change the fluids. Carburettors and distributors can be more reliable than any complicated fuel injection system , and easily fixed when it goes wrong. It also has an engine that will not destroy itself if a rubber belt breaks. It also doesnt have any expensive check engine lights...... An acquaintance has a late model Mitsubishi. Her service cost $1200 and took 4 hours. If I break down in the middle of nowhere, it can be repaired on the spot. A bit like an old engine really.... If old tech stuff fits my needs better, I will use it.In my experience, long periods of full current does and willl melt the solder on the internal diode connections, and under vibration will fracture and become open circuit. Hence remoting them away from vibration and heat.
But what is clear is you have NO experience with they type of alt I am talking about as you seem to have taken a pre considered position they are expensive and not up to the durability of the old style you favour which is inherently WRONG no matter how much you want to take exception to that.
The layout of the enclosed alts and their internals is quite different to the older style which I also have a lot of hands on experience with in Bosch, Lucas and Hitachi brands. The normal thing in automotive tech is to design out known problems and that is exactly what they have done with alts. Again, even if the machine was capable of melting the joints which you are probably unaware of the construction thereof, the increased cooling of these units would dissipate the heat long before anything inside got that hot.
Had you seen the joints you are talking of in the type of alt I am talking about, you'd see the problem with your theroy. Looking at this very part I have sitting on my desk here, they aren't soldered. They are pressed/ clipped and potted. Rather than round they are rectangular units with the connections being a thick piece of flat metal designed to be crimp type connected. They have a large air gap on the component side and a finely finned heat sink on the other which is all one piece rather than separate Diodes. . There is no way these things are going to fail on the joints here from heat or vibration.
Amazing! It's as if they foresaw this problem from years gone by and took precautions to eliminate the problem. The engineers must have had ESP or something!
As I said, your alternators sound wonderful. I use what I have. They wont work as is for big battery banks, I modify them. Yours too would need modifying. Looking at an exploded diagram, there is little difference between new and old. I suspect you are an undercover altternator salesman posing on old engine forums, trying to sell stuff. Unlike a multicylinder car engine, the pulses of a small stationary engine will cause whipping and vibration.
Larger pulleys cause less flexing and less heat buildup in a vee belt, Use bigger pulleys, and keep the RPM down.
Ah, OK, so now the story has changed. Again, How much longer life would this typically give you and what is the cost of the belts you are using?
One advantage of serpentine belts is they do have a better flexibility and can handle the pulleys the alternators are designed with as well as bending in either direction. Using a tensioner system also makes for less maintenance and no slippage as they are always under correct tension and this also eliminated much of the whipping you speak of. In modern vehicle engines where the RPM increases and decreases very rapidly suck as with the power curves of Turbo cars and that of manuals when gearing down, the serpentine belts are much batter at handling this than V's.
That's why every vehicle I am aware of uses them and so to modern trucks as well.
I agree with this, but serpentine /micro vee belts are not so common here, and pulleys need to be made. Vee belts are available everywhere, so are the pulleys.You also seem to make an assumption that an alternator used on a vehicle is not subject to vibration. Curious.
Is it because they have multicylinders and use serpentine belts?Continued..........
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