Date:         Tue, 19 Apr 94 13:16:12 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      electrical ideas (wild theories and other natural phenomena) ...

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