Just an Idea.........

[Dadz Toy BFI]

I was just driving behind a bakkie that had one of those roof mounted plastic 'whirly vents' mounted on top of it's canopy

Got me thinking.....

What do our esteemed engineering type brainiacs think of the posibility of using one or more of those things to drive an Alternator to charge up a dual battery system ie. one or two regular cranking batteries which are Isolated from the Main battery

Maybe the Alternator could be tucked up in a front corner of the canopy with geared down belts to a pulley on the whirly (s)

Comments and advice brainiacs

Rich

[Bushwacker]

It seems like an excellent idea, but maybe the alternator with the load of a charging battery would put strain on the whirly vent thing and it could stop turning because of its small size. Will have to experiment first.

[ThysdJ]

I suppose it is possible but why exactly would you want to do this? You can put a upgraded bicycle dynamo against a tyre and also get current to load a battery.. The pulleys and v-belts and chains for the twirly wirly will take up a lot of packing space...

[Dadz Toy BFI]

I'm hoping to come up with something that harnassed wind power (and hey we got plenty of that in the Cape!) and plenty of draught when the vehicle is cruising!

Maybe it's just a lot of "hot air" , maybe not brainaics

Rich

[ThysdJ]

no look Rich, it's not a bad idea, but it's not exactly very practical. You need some sort of windmill/fan that catches the wind and in order for that to catch enough wind and overcome the resistance of an alternator, the fan-blades need to be sort of big-ish.. :o

I know on yaughts they have some sort of wind-powered battery chargers.. You can mount one of them on your truck. BUT then you cant go faster than say about 20 knots??

[cprinsloo]

Hi Rich,

Not a bad idea, but maybe not that practical. The extra wind resistance will nuliify any advantage, because one uses fuel to power the vehicle to "generate" the air stream (wind) which drives the thingy which drives the alternator, which then charges the battery. Doesn't sound very efficient. Maybe the conventional alternator will be more effective, because it's driven directly from the engine..... (But I can be wrong :D )

My 1/2 cent.

Cheers,

Chris