Ford Superduty battery and charging issue
Yesterday, I had my small utility trailer on the hitch of my 2003 F-250. I had dropped the trailer off and then put it back on the ball. Since it was near nightfall, I checked for running lights on th...
Forum Discussion
External regulators occupy a heatsink about twice the area of integral regulators. OEM is like a fart in a whirlwind with regard to alternator design. MoPar and don't know whom else uses the ECU as a basis for alternator voltage regulation.
Brushless alternators have horrible low speed performance. To improve this weakness with a fleet of school buses I rewound the rotor spool increasing ampere/turns and ended up with a 1.7 ohm rotor resistance. I then designed a double Wye stator and plugged each slot with 15.5 gauge wire and rectified the Wye with 30-ampere surface mount rectifiers.
ORIGINAL
75-ampere hot rating maximum
18-amperes at 1,600 rotor RPM
MODIFIED
142-amperes max at 1,200 RPM -less- than the OEM rating.
57-amperes @ 1,600 RPM
I used the TRANSPO 911-04 Voltage regulator which was attached to the rear housing plate of those 25 SI Delcos. A 50-amp rated power transistor heat sinked to a massive radiator, equally massive electrolytic caps, MR2535 avalanche diode.
Nineteen modified busses. Seven years. Not one comeback or misfire. The NTN LUA 6305 bearing choice helped too :)
All done on a supposedly hopeless "brushless" alternator.
Frank Oropeza TRANSPO gone
Big Al Renard, Renard rectifiers gone
Elmer Trapp Ace Electric (stator and rotor manufacturing) gone
Lund & Flynn thank god are still around but Bill Lund passed away
St. Marys Carbon is still there but I can no longer purchase custom brushes in mil quantities.
But it was fun while it lasted. Frankenstein's Lab. A 15 HP variable speed hydraulic alternator test bench with tachometer and NIST grade instrumentation. Tattle-tale adhesive temperature discs that spoke volumes about interior conditions. This is the era when Frank Oropeza of Transpo visited for a week and Marion Hovermale of Delco (the CS alternator project leader engineer) visited for four days. Fun times. Awful nerdy but I lapped it up. They both were fascinated with ongoing battery tests, all managed by custom designed automation. Crude, rude, and effective. Hate to have to price 1M of 10-gauge nichrome wire these days.
There was a rebuilding shop in Fremont, CA whose owner was sharp as a hypodermic needle. What a joy it was talking with him for a couple of days. The year was 1984. His quote "And here I thought I was all alone".
Today I fear the USA is continuing to morph into a society of Wogs. A Just-Get-By society-wide mentality.
Brushless alternators have horrible low speed performance. To improve this weakness with a fleet of school buses I rewound the rotor spool increasing ampere/turns and ended up with a 1.7 ohm rotor resistance. I then designed a double Wye stator and plugged each slot with 15.5 gauge wire and rectified the Wye with 30-ampere surface mount rectifiers.
ORIGINAL
75-ampere hot rating maximum
18-amperes at 1,600 rotor RPM
MODIFIED
142-amperes max at 1,200 RPM -less- than the OEM rating.
57-amperes @ 1,600 RPM
I used the TRANSPO 911-04 Voltage regulator which was attached to the rear housing plate of those 25 SI Delcos. A 50-amp rated power transistor heat sinked to a massive radiator, equally massive electrolytic caps, MR2535 avalanche diode.
Nineteen modified busses. Seven years. Not one comeback or misfire. The NTN LUA 6305 bearing choice helped too :)
All done on a supposedly hopeless "brushless" alternator.
Frank Oropeza TRANSPO gone
Big Al Renard, Renard rectifiers gone
Elmer Trapp Ace Electric (stator and rotor manufacturing) gone
Lund & Flynn thank god are still around but Bill Lund passed away
St. Marys Carbon is still there but I can no longer purchase custom brushes in mil quantities.
But it was fun while it lasted. Frankenstein's Lab. A 15 HP variable speed hydraulic alternator test bench with tachometer and NIST grade instrumentation. Tattle-tale adhesive temperature discs that spoke volumes about interior conditions. This is the era when Frank Oropeza of Transpo visited for a week and Marion Hovermale of Delco (the CS alternator project leader engineer) visited for four days. Fun times. Awful nerdy but I lapped it up. They both were fascinated with ongoing battery tests, all managed by custom designed automation. Crude, rude, and effective. Hate to have to price 1M of 10-gauge nichrome wire these days.
There was a rebuilding shop in Fremont, CA whose owner was sharp as a hypodermic needle. What a joy it was talking with him for a couple of days. The year was 1984. His quote "And here I thought I was all alone".
Today I fear the USA is continuing to morph into a society of Wogs. A Just-Get-By society-wide mentality.
