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Date:         Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:09:18 -0800
Reply-To:     Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Calculate fuel consumption when idling?
Comments: To: Michael Elliott <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <474B3179.2060408@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

So great to see such a comprehensive, well thought out and thorough overview of the whole situation, and well written, with sentences and punctuation too ! Bravo ! The special charger thing sounds great ! No Ludite you , that's for sure !

-----Original Message----- From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Michael Elliott Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 12:50 PM To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM Subject: Re: Calculate fuel consumption when idling?

Hi Daniel, I wasn't interested in starting a multithread post about the whys and wherefores of my question, I just wanted to know if anyone knew the answer to how much fuel the engine uses when idling. I think I have a good reason to want to know, and didn't want to chew up bandwidth with backstory.

But since you asked.

The charger is a specialized four-stage charger that takes in the normal output voltage of the alternator at idle, and steps it up as needed to charge the deep cycle house battery. It does a far better job of fully charging a deep cycle battery with the engine at idle than the alternator alone does with the engine revved up.

I wrote about this in some recent posts, and also on the solar page on the wiki. See

http://vanagonwiki.net/index.php/Solar#Charging_Deep_Cycle_Batteries_with_th e_Vanagon_Alternator

I am a BIG, a HUGE!!! proponent of silent solar. Generators make me crazy. I normally camp ONLY in sunny conditions and deploy solar panels to keep our house battery topped off. One thing you'd be wasting your air on is lecturing me about the evils of generators and other noisy machines in campgrounds. Preaching to the choir, I believe it is called.

But I have a photo essay I am doing that takes me to a campground in the mountains near here, and I need to go once a month for a full year. This weekend is predicted to be overcast and likely rainy. Perfect for my needs but lousy for solar. This campground is almost completely empty when the weather turns bad. If there is even one more person there I will be surprised. The engine-charging scheme is just my backup. With a 130 Ah deep cycle battery, cold weather to limit how frequently the Norcold refrigerator runs, efficient LED lights, etc., I probably won't even drop my battery below 50% after two full nights. But in case I am stuck for some reason, the engine can be used to keep it full, and much more efficiently than using the alternator directly.

If one is going to run an internal combustion engine to do charging, I personally find little Honda generators to be no less obnoxious than an idling WBX engine.

My last run was without the idling. That's my base point. I have tweaked the engine timing a bit, and have had the wheels aligned. I'm making the same run in a couple days. I may not need to use the engine for charging, but if I do, I will do so discreetly; and if I have to, I don't want to return and not know what effect it will have had on the mileage calculations.

-- Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana") 74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano KG6RCR

On 11/26/2007 12:01 PM Scott Daniel - Shazam wrote:

> Well, finally the whole story comes out. > Shame to run a whole giant car engine just to charge a battery, especially > for up to two hours. I hope that's not in a campground with neighboring > campers, even if it is a quietly running stock waterboxer. > And *now* that we know what's really going on, perhaps you need to > consider rpm while charging. Does it charge significantly better at 1,500 > rpm than at 800 rpm idle ? Is it more efficient to charge at a higher rpm > for a shorter period ? etc. > How about this - you make your 'standard run' include exactly the same > period of idle charging each trip ? then you're fuel mileage calculations > will include 'trip there and back plus X hours idling." > Methinks a very quiet small Honda generator is really the right device and > method for your purposes. Though it is another device to lug along, take up > space and weight, and they're not cheap, so it's understandable you'd want > to not have one of those if you could help it. > I got it ! .....stationary bicycle driving a generator ! Then you pedal > each day 45 minutes - no pollution, no noise, no burning fossil fuel > inefficiently, plus you get exercise. And how many calories per hour does a > vanagonite burn charging a battery at 5 amps per hour burn ???? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of > Michael Elliott > Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 7:04 AM > To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM > Subject: Re: Calculate fuel consumption when idling? > > Hi Phil, > > I want to find out what difference having the wheels on my van aligned > makes to my van's mileage. I have a "standard" round trip I make, to a > nearby mountain camping area. The last time I made that trip I got 16.2 > mpg. I will be making that trip again in a couple days. > > This time, though, I will not be using solar power to keep my aux battery > full. I have a battery charger that runs off the alternator and I reckon I > might need to run the engine a couple hours a day to top off the battery. > > If I don't have a clue about how much fuel the engine consumes when idling > then I can't factor that in when calculating my mileage after I return in > order to see what diff the alignment made. So that's why I asked if anyone > knew fuel consumption when idling. It wasn't, ah, an /idle/ question. > > -- > Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott > 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus > 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana") > 74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano > KG6RCR > > > > On 11/26/2007 6:04 AM phil cain wrote: > >> Here we are trying to figure out what the idle >> consumption is, when the best we can do on the miles >> per gallon/ or idle consumption, is get a close >> estimate, do we have a screw loose somewhere. We are >> not flying a aircraft where the fuel is figured real >> close, we can always pull over to the side of the road >> and walk to the gas station. I have a average of 19-21 >> MPG on a 80 Westy that's good enough for me. Phil >> >> >> > ____________________________________________________________________________ > ________ >> Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. >> Make Yahoo! your homepage. >> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs >


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