> But sitting there at camp hearing the engine run, it's not clear to me > how fast the engine needs to run, nor how long it needs to run, to bring > the aux battery back to fully-charged status. I had similar questions, since I had to run my engine to recharge my aux battery while camping 3 days and running my computer via an inverter. Idling for 30+ minutes appeared to charge it back up--this by watching the voltage level in the system. (Of course, max voltage depends on the temp of the battery.) I hadn't run my aux down very much--the inverter was very sensitive to the voltage and quit when it started to drop a little. A while back, someone stated that the engine needed high rpm to charge. I doubted that and spent some time searching the web. Result: at idle, the output of the alt (amps, not volts) is maybe 70% of max, so you don't need to sit there rev-ing it. Of course, this doesn't answer your question of "how long...." Here are the refs I found: Chart of RPM vs amps: http://www.fordmuscle.com/archives/2004/07/6GAlternator/index.shtml Looks like a pretty flat "curve" on this. Balmar (marine alternators) with very good tables: http://www.balmar.net/PDF/Alternator-Regulator%20Guide.pdf Richard A Jones Boulder, Colorado |
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