an idea i had been kicking around for a long time was to take a 2nd alternator (or generator) and match it up to some tiny little gasoline engine ... like a very small lawn mower engine ... making your own little 12v auxilliary generator. the problems that i thought up were * noise. tiny little high reving engine. * heat. it's air cooled, so now you'd have to have some sort of electrical fan to cool it. * power output. the best it could do is whatever your bus does at 'normal' speeds. * power selection. only 12v. so it worked out as being better and cheaper (imho) to just purchase a honda generator. but where to semi-permanently mount the honda? well, one fellow in town has solved that: he mounted a medium sized honda to the front bumper of his 1980 bus ... and uses it to run his winnebago-type roof-top a/c air conditioner pod. looks really wierd (the pod). the generator looks, at first, like a big winch ... until you notice the exhaust pipe and muffler. i was hoping for something really small and quiet, that would fit over in the little area behind (in front of?) the left taillight. one of these days ... joel
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