Gary Wolf wrote:

Paul,
   Has anyone tried a permanent magnet alternator from a motorcycle of the
'70s? I am thinking of the ones Suzuki used on its twin cylinder 2-strokes.
The rotor was a low inertia permanent magnet about 3" dia and the stator was
able to provide ~6 amps at 12 volts with a 4-diode full-wave rectifier. The
models below 500cc were unregulated, the T500 had a simple solid state
regulator.
   There are still lots of these in the bike wrecking yards, and the rotor
would be easy to adapt to the end of a shaft. The stator assembly could be
adapted or just the coils could be used on a custom aluminum plate.
   These were a trouble-free unit, since the magnets were spinning, and
battery power was not required to excite the rotor. I used to handle the
warranty claims for Suzuki in Canada back then and there was no return
history for these units at all.

Gary,
 Most English bikes used a Lucas version of the permanent magnet alternator. The
only time they failed was when some moron (usually the owner) tried to remove it
with a hammer!! Extremely reliable, but you need to spin them at least 2500 RPM to
get decent output from them. Is I recall, the battery was in a discharge state any
time the RPMs where below 2000 if the headlight was on.
Charlie Kuss

 
The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org