Well with a little fitting I was able to get the 28Si fitted to the existing 2" mounting. A few washers and spacers got the alignment right. It still needs
work to be sure that the bolt stays tight but I'll get to that.
The existing adjusting arm is not the right shape so I picked up a
cheap 10"
aluminum turnbuckle at the local
hardware store. I bent the eyes to hold the bolts on the engine and alternator so as to fit. It needs a down angle to match the alternator and still make it under the expansion tank.
I'll get a better bolt and weld some eyes on at the correct place. Sooner or later.
As it is it adjusts well but does not have space for the lock nut.
As you can see from the photo I kept the
plug for the
Balmar alternator and made 2 small jumpers from the alternator (field and stator) posts to spade blades to insert into the connector. I'll likely do 2 more things here - 1) make new jumper wires with blue and white
insulation to match the cable to the regulator. 2) come up with a set of tie wraps to "lock" the connector and jumpers together.
OK, moment of truth (keep the orange smoke in the wires) time.
Firing the engine up the Balmar MC-612 does its 45 second wait then soft start
ramp up. The tach is reading low but that is to be expected (number of poles etc). the amp meter starts climbing and peaks at about 165 amps with the regulator set for 13.9 volts.
My house bank is 700 AH of
LiFePO4 at about 90% SOC.
A quick check with the IR temp meter shows the alternator pulley is running hot (130 degrees). This indicates that the belt is slipping a bit. Adjust the tension and the alt pulley temp drops. It eventually stabilizes around 90 to 95 degrees F.
This is more
current than I want from the alternator anyway so shutdown and get out my magic (magnetic) wand.
I reset the bulk voltage to 13.8 (from 13.9) and the absorb voltage from 13.8 to 13.7 (not sure why I did that... Just in the moment.).
Float remains at 13.2 volts.
Amp manager was off and to reduce the max
current set it to 150. My manual says that 185 is 75% field current, 125 is 50% thus 150 is about 60% or around 120 amps.
Starting the engine up again I get 130 amps which quickly drops down to a comfy 80 to 90 amps. The
batteries are near (what I'm calling) 100% SOC and with the Bulk voltage at 13.8 I do expect the charge to be dropping.
out of time....
I'll have to go over all of the regulators parameters and verify that we end up in float. In the last test we went from CC to CV mode in that the
battery voltage reached 13.8 and the regulator kept it there with the current (slowly) dropping.
3.4 volts per cell (13.6 volts) is kind of a magic number. Charge below this and you get very much reduced capacity. Once you hit 3.4 VPC you end up with near 100% capacity and very little difference from 3.5 or 3.6 VPC. At least it appears so from some
LiFePO4 discharge curved I've seen.
Anyway - Success! in installing a Delco 28Si with external regulation on a
Perkins 4.236.