Re: Voltage Regulator advice

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 19 May 2005 farna@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Heck, I wonder if you could feed the alternator outputs into an
> old fashioned generator regulator? Probably wouldn't handle
> anyting over 35A though...


  >>>SHUDDERS AT THE THOUGHT<<< Those old things are horrible.
They make me laugh -- buzzing, burning contacts, bending spring
arms to set voltage, it's so 19th century! They did work though,
far better than it seems they ought to!

Nearly all all alternator voltage regulators (for the usual
rotating field alts) are pretty much the same; they cary mostly in
connectors and only slightly in set voltage. They're internally
pretty simple, a transistor, a zener, a thermistor for temperature
compensation and some other crap, all alternators want basically
the same thing (voltage too low? increase field current. Etc).

Bigger alts need more field current, but not much else changes.  A
reg from a 55A alt should be simply a bit heavier-duty than one
from a 21A. (It might get hot vice-versa.)

They all have:

* battery connection (measure battery voltage)
* field connection (drives the field)
* ground (often alternator body)
* idiot light
* stator connection (measures alt output before final diode)

If you can find the pinouts for the regulator, you can get it to
work, if it's any modern-ish alternator 20a - 150a. There might be
exceptions, but probably not very many.