Alternator v. no alternator - 10% gain @ 70 km/h

[JanGeo]

Originally Posted by Brock

The thing I really like about the iota chargers is you can feed them anything from 90 volts to 180 volts, AC or DC and they put out a rock steady 13.4 or 14.4 volts DC. I didn't believe it at first but someone who dug in to the unit tried and now uses it on his electric truck to charge a 12v battery from his traction pack for all the old existing 12v items.

I bet a 35 amp switching Vector charger will operate over such a wide range of input voltage as well and they sell for about $65 - I have a bunch of them. My point is that with a $3.00 transistor and a decent core with a bunch of turns of wire and a few bucks of components you could build a switcher to drop any DC battery voltage down to 14 volts at a pretty decent current. That iota charge controller doesn't list any current levels but it looks like it should work pretty well in bulk mode while you are driving.

[JanGeo]

Nice thing about an electric water pump is that you can continue to get heat from the heater with the engine off like when stopped at a light with engine off and regulate the pump speed (wasted energy) increasing it when it is needed like when you are burning a lot of gas and not a function of engine RPM so that lugging it on a hot day you could run the water pump faster for more cooling etc.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by JanGeo

You are getting the wrong cells - raw cells with 5.5 amp output crate of 50 for $450 last time I checked was over a year ago. ...

http://www.sunpowercorp.com/solarcells/

Thanks for the link, but that's the manufacturer (no info on the site about purchasing). I'm curious where you can buy the cells retail. Do you still have a link for that?

[JanGeo]

If you contact them directly you can purchase them by the crate of 50 cells - they gave me pricing but didn't get to the final "take my CCard number please".

[onegammyleg]

On saturday I replaced the battery in my Swift.

I had know it was bad since I bought the car a few months ago , and as its getting colder (and batteries dont like cold) the big block 1 litre engine has been getting slower and slower to crank up and fire.
The battery's capacity is suitable for engines over 2 times that size , so for it to be struggling to turn the small engine I knew it was dead.

I have been noticing the car was a little down on power as well compared to when I bought it.

Amazingly when I repalced the battery engine power is back to normal again.

Ime supposing that the dead battery was always under volatage and wanting a full charge and that the power loss was from a full loaded alternator.

Unfortunately it will probably show up in this tank full FE test. , but interesting anyway the effect of the alternator on power and FE.

[GasSavers_Brock]

Oh, one thing I use a lot is a Deltran water proof battery tender. It charges at a lowly 800 mA up to 14.6v and then drops back to 13.2v float. I would strongly recommend one of these (or a larger version) if your messing with a disconnected alt. The battery will die a quick death cycling it without a good true full charge. I use this charger on our van, I suspect the alternator is a bit off in the van and never full charges the battery.

On the wagon the Deltran will show a full charge in 30 minutes and the van takes 4-6 hours.

Even running the alternator as normal the cars starts much quicker in winter and I figure it doesn't have to run the alternator as hard to get the battery charged back up after sitting a while since it starts ?full?.

Even a solar charger would likely work in most cases for this "topping off" of the battery

[JanGeo]

Definately Brock - most electrical systems if not run for hours will not charge the battery as much as it needs. A new battery should be charged at a slow rate for about a week before it really gets the self discharge down to under 0.1 amps. Deltran makes some really great chargers . . . just wished they made a really high output current version.

[MetroMPG]

For those following this thread, I've updated metrompg.com with an article on this topic, summarized and describing my experiment in more detail:



http://www.metrompg.com/posts/alternator-optional.htm

Thanks to Brock for corroborating the results with his Jetta.

[kickflipjr]

You seriously have a bungee cord as your water pump belt!
Arent you worried a bit (I guess it's better then a bike innertube).

Great article metro!

[MetroMPG]

Yep, bungee. Bungee kicks *** compared to bike inner tubes. I'm thinking of making a second one as a backup. There's room on the pulley for 2, side by side.

I'd rather have a smart electric water pump, but I only know how to make a stupid one. And I'm lazy. So bungee it is!