Greetings all,
Firstly, a quick
introduction - I am a
very long time lurker - I read CF religiously, but have never posted... I guess there's a first time for everything.
I'm currently in the middle of a long and painful
project (3 years... converting a
racer to a cruiser - gutted entire
boat, redid bulkheads, redid
everything... *groan*) and am roughly entering the final stages where I'm actually starting to close the cabins up and
paint the
interior (real soon now!) before tackling the outside... which means that once the
interior is painted, I won't be able to glass in anything new unless I grind the
paint off (yet)
again etc etc... so am trying to think as far ahead as possible to avoid rework.
One of the things that I have been studiously procrastinating is the issue of
charging, however the
engine cover is almost complete...
Anyway - without going into the details of the entire system etc- I want to squeeze in as many amps in a daily ~1 hour
charging regimen as possible..
So I've been looking at high output alternators and have done the reading and in effect, installing a 300 A large case
alternator on my little
Yanmar 3gm30 is not exactly recommended...
As for the reasons - I generally see the "side-loading" issue as the primary argument against.
Now, thinking laterally, I was wondering what would be the problem with
direct coupling the alternator to the pulley? I.e. no belt...
Engine crankshaft pulley bolted directly to the alternator pulley or a flex coupling or somesuch.
I can think of two options for mounting the alternator itself:
- One is on the engine - i.e. two steel beams bolted to the engine mounts/feet themselves (and maybe a few other places) so the engine/alternator moves as one....
- My preferred option: is to heavily glass a platform into the bilge in front of the engine and mount the alternator on that - and have threaded rods or somesuch bolted to the platform and utilize jacking nuts to adjust height/angle etc..
The biggest problem I can see here is that this system will not have the benefit of different pulley ratios etc - so alternator
rpm would be the same as engine
rpm.
Looking at various alternator output curves - including the
Balmar 98, at 3000 rpm, it puts out ~240A... and 3000 rpm is not much to ask of the engine, and this is with zero side-loading.
Can somebody please tell me whether this is going to
work or is there something I've missed?
Thanks muchly!
//ak.
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