Spring commissioning!

[DesertAlbin736]

As part of preventive maintenance I recently replaced the raw water impeller on my Yanmar after 2 years (we hardly used the boat last year) and 258 engine hours. Upon a close look at fan belt that drives alternator and internal fresh water pump I notices the belt had a lot of cracks in it. I replaced it with a new one plus bought a spare. Good idea to add that to pre-season checklist. If you lose either fan belt (in the case of belt driven raw water pump, some are gear driven) you're left dead in the water unless you have spares aboard.

[DCatSea]

Thanks for the reminder DA; I have just added "buy spare fanbelt" to my ever growing "do-list". I replaced it in November as part of lay-up maintenance, and need to restock the ready-use/hit-the-fan locker. (Along with filters, and a spare raw water impeller).

[WillieC]

One of my todo-s is to upgrade the running lights with LEDs. We like the original port and starboard lights, but I can't figure out how to order a green-compatible and a red compatible LED to replace the mini-handwarmers originally installed.

[DesertAlbin736]

I thought about running lights but decided to stick with existing incandescent festoon bulbs. After all, running lights are just that. If running at night then by definition the engine is running, so what's the point of spending the extra $$ for LEDs? Would be different if for a sailboat. We very rarely run at night. I did swap out incandescent for LED for the anchor light.

[dkirsop]

The incandescent bulbs are white so just replace them with white, LED festoon bulbs. It's only a few bucks, not expensive.

[carolmarie]

See my recent post on changing out incandescent bulbs for LEDs. Not sure it’s “legal” regarding nav light USCG certification.
Don.

[Dieselram94]

The leds are usually way brighter. So based on that reason alone I have dumped the original incandescent junk for led. It’s kinda my policy that every standard bulb in everything I own is trashed in favor of led.

[motthediesel]

It's still very much winter here in Northern NY, but I'm chomping at the bit to start some upgrades to our A27FC. Chiefly, I have a new custom alternator on order from Compass Marine, 105A with an external regulator. Also going to add a second swivel helm seat for the "copilot"

Also, more modifications to our trailer -- wider axles, new, larger wheels and tires, and electric over hydraulic brakes. I'll cover those by adding to my trailer modification thread at some point.

[DesertAlbin736]

Chiefly, I have a new custom alternator on order from Compass Marine, 105A with an external regulator.

I upgraded my 35 amp stock alternator to a 100 amp one from Mark Grasser's DC Solutions in 2016. That was part of the snowballing can of worms that opened up when I did my holding tank project. Making room for the larger holding tank meant relocating batteries to a more cramped space in the starboard bench seat lazarette locker. That made access for adding water to conventional FLA batteries more difficult, which meant switching to AGM's. AGMs meant needing to install a "smart" external voltage regulator, also from Mark Grasser. But I had trouble getting the stock 35 amp Hitachi alternator's internal reg to not override the external reg's lower voltage stepped charging regime. So now I have a 100 amp alternator which is probably overkill for a 24 HP engine, but it was the smallest one available. Here's what my recently upgraded external reg looks like. The first version I installed eventually failed and started overcharging the batteries. So far the new regulator is working well. By the way, our temperatures have been topping out at 80+ the last few days. Winter as we know it is effectively over.

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[motthediesel]

Very interesting! I think the potential problem with putting high-output alternators on our smaller and (at least in my case) older engines is not so much having the horsepower to drive them, as it is the power transmission to the unit. Charging 100 amps at the relatively low rotational speeds we're talking about requires a considerable torque load on the belt/pully. It's asking a lot of a little 3/8" V-belt to do that. A modern, serpentine "multi-vee" belt drive would do much better, But that would be very difficult and expensive to engineer for an old engine like our Lehman/Peugeot. That's why I think an external, programable charge regulator is a necessity in this case, to limit output and hence, belt wear.

So why use a 100A alternator and then limit charging to maybe 2 thirds of that? I think it's less stressful on the unit that way, and will result in less heating and a longer life for both the mechanical and electrical parts of the system.

[Burton]

Nigel Calder has a thorough section on alternator pulley size and speed in his book.

A big issue on our alternators is that often we have battery switches which have position A, B, and both. And of course, off. If this switch is shut off while the engine is still running, it will blow the diode‘s right out of the alternator. I am installing two battery switches, one for the house bank and one for the starter. And, a battery manager which prefers the start battery first, and then the house batteries. Without the battery manager, the starter battery tends to be overcharged and the house batteries tend to be under charged when they are connected to the “both” switch setting. The reason is that the start battery has thinner plates, and the storage batteries have thicker plates. At least this is true for flooded lead acid batteries.

[DesertAlbin736]

A big issue on our alternators is that often we have battery switches which have position A, B, and both.

I've got that covered with a Blue Sea Systems "Add A Battery" switch kit. The switch is either ON or OFF and the house & start banks are always kept separate. A separate charging circuit is closed via the "SI-ACR" relay, that is "Start Interrupt-Automatic Charging Relay". The alternator output always goes to the start battery first, and when the relay senses charging voltage over 13 V it closes and allows charging current to go through a separate circuit to the house bank. It has a manual emergency "Combine Batteries" overrride option. The "Start Interrupt" function has a small sensing wire connected to the starter button terminal and locks out the ACR while the starter motor is momentarily energized while cranking to protect electronics from excessive voltage drops in the house circuits .

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Charging voltage and current is controlled by a three step "Smart Charge R210a" (replaced and upgraded with partial pro-rated warranty from an earlier version that failed) external voltage regulator set to AGM specs for "Constant Current, Constant Voltage, and Float" cycles. I'm like Richard Attenborough's character in Jurassic Park, 'spared no expense'.

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[Burton]

Exactly what we are doing, Desert Albin. I should have mentioned that the switches will be on and off.