Gas Engine Driven Battery Charger

[GILow]

I know I don’t need to tell you this, but I am going to say it anyway...

Make sure no weird wind effect can send that exhaust back into the boat and fit a couple of carbon-monoxide detectors if you haven’t already.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product in person, not reading about it in a coroner’s report.

[reflectionsv37]

Here's a couple photos of the Honda Genset install.

The first shows the generator and controls from inside the cockpit. The generator hangs in the rack on the outside. It's up high so it would take a real big wave to swamp it.

The Admiral made the cover out of Stamoid. It is waterproof, has held up outside in the heat for 6 years, is soft and pliable and look greats for the first 15 minutes after you purchase it. Everything stains it and it's impossible to clean. I just pull the cover up on both sides, on top of the generator and tie them in place when in use as shown. In torrential rains I can pull the the side that covers the electronic side of the generator when it is running. There are no air vents on that side. The exhaust is on the other side. What you can't see in the photo is a stainless steel strap the goes over the top of the generator with a padlock to keep it from being stolen. The generator sits in a "tray" she made with sides that go up about 5" when pulled up. When the cover is pulled down, a drawstring pulls the cover tight around the bottom. There are drain holes in the bottom of the tray.

The second photo shows the electronics end of the generator and should give you an idea how the frame is constructed. The electrical wire goes through the hull into the coming just below the generator and exits in the cockpit coming box next to the shore power connector.

The third photo shows the 5 gal auxiliary tank. It is made by Plastimo. You can use any tank suitable for an outboard motor. I wanted one that was more like a jerry can and this is the closest I could find. I'm not sure you can buy this tank in the US since it has a vent and doesn't include one of the fancy new spouts that are designed to spread fuel all over your decks. Photo 2 shows the replacement fuel cap. They can be purchased on Amazon and other places. Be sure to include a regular primer bulb in the fuel line to prime the hose and to top of the fuel tank in the generator. The generator has an internal fuel pump. In my installation, the fuel hose is about 15' long and the lift is probably 3 feet.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Gene

[RaymondR]

Thar's a nice solid installation Gene. I had looked at hanging mine off the transom behind the helmsmans seat as one of the options and am firming up on it after seeing ypur images.

Also like the idea of not having to fill a small tank all the rime, you've inspired me to a small electric fuel pump from 10 Litre jerry cans..

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

In 2016 I needed to move a newly purchased Island Packet 40 from the town of Busseltown on the SW corner of the Australian continent around the northern coast to south Queensland on the east coast.

It being an almost 4,000 nm coastal voyage I decided to purchase a small portable genset for emergency battery charging and consequently, being in a place without any sort of Honda agency ended up with a Yamaha 1000 watt inverter generator. This thing has turned out to be the bane of my life and I was about half pleased when it quit working. It has been such a frustrating piece of equipment that I am not going to pursue any warranty repairs and will junk it.

In order to have an emergency charging facility I have used an electric start, 5 hp gas engine to belt drive an 85 amp Bosch alternator on one side and a 120 amp Chinese alternator on the other.

I had originally intended to direct couple a 200 amp alternator but as the engine already had a double V belt pulley on it, I already had the 85 amp alternator and a spare, and I have two battery banks, one AGM and a LiPo it appeared a good plan to be able to assign an alternator to each and charge them at the same time.

Since it is a gas engine I wanted it enclosed in a metal enclosure and will clothe this is noise dampening foam inside a second glass covered plywood box.

The first image shows the engine from the pull cord and starter panel side, mounted in the spill containment tray.

The second image shows alternators and motor from the drive side.

The third image shows the metal enclosure on the unit.

Raymond, I know you are well on your way to proceed with this project and unlikely to heed my advice, but I have to say I think it is un-necessary.

I don't think it is a good idea to stack a big box on deck to supply gobs of electricity to your Island Packet. That vessel has enough trouble sailing. You can supply all of your needs with the engine driven alternator and the existing large inverter you have. You will probably be motoring quite a bit. If you have solar, you can supplant that engine alternator output. If you carry a spare alternator and regulator, as long as the engine is running you can recover from an alternator failure.

We sailed around the world for 20+ years without any additional electrical generating equipment and we were never without sufficient electricity to keep our electronics, lights, music and freezer running. When in a marina we used shore power and ran an 8000btu air conditioner.

I would advise you to cancel all the projects to build and add new pieces of equipment and focus on how to make that boat sail upwind and in light air.

Then go sailing.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Raymond, I know you are well on your way to proceed with this project and unlikely to heed my advice, but I have to say I think it is un-necessary.

I am one of those folks who, having experienced the problems resulting from long sessions of idling with the main engine, have become paranoid about the practice.

I don't think it is a good idea to stack a big box on deck to supply gobs of electricity to your Island Packet. That vessel has enough trouble sailing.

Experience obliges me to agree with you regarding the sailing qualities of the Island Packet but I did not buy the boat for it's sailing qualities, I bought it because it is one of the most solidly built FG boat I have ever seen. My previous boat was steel and I was obliged to change because I was getting to old and lazy to maintain it properly.

You can supply all of your needs with the engine driven alternator and the existing large inverter you have. You will probably be motoring quite a bit. If you have solar, you can supplant that engine alternator output. If you carry a spare alternator and regulator, as long as the engine is running you can recover from an alternator failure.

I already had the Honda engine because it was installed on the steel boat with an alternator and compressor on it which I used for maintenance with air tools. The installation on the steel boat had the engine on deck with the alternator and compressor inside the boat. I did not want to cut a big hole in the deck of the IP.

We sailed around the world for 20+ years without any additional electrical generating equipment and we were never without sufficient electricity to keep our electronics, lights, music and freezer running. When in a marina we used shore power and ran an 8000btu air conditioner.

Unfortunately my professional history and consequent mental conditioning obliges me towards redundancy of critical systems. I was quiet contented to rely upon the small Yamaha genset for contingency battery charging until I experienced a few days of overcast weather and found it no longer worked. On reviewing my short history with the machine I realized that it was inherently unreliable.

I would advise you to cancel all the projects to build and add new pieces of equipment and focus on how to make that boat sail upwind and in light air.

The other project in play is the replacement of the ugly canvas dodger with a hard dodger which has another 300 Watts of solar on it. My paranoia also extends to insufficient solar.

I am trying to go cruising but the present panic is interfering with my stocking of cruising supplies, maybe next week.

Then go sailing.

Whilst our opinions differ I appreciate you're having expressed them. Good cruising mate.

[rossdv8]

I've been using one of these 12 VOLT 55 AMP – Christie Engineering since about 2002. The same unit has lasted through one 18 footer, two twenty six footers (one was wrecked in cyclone Ului in 2010 and another wrecked in cyclone Debbie in 2017. It is currently waiting for me to refit my last remaining yacht, a 24 foot trailable.

In Ului it was seriously soaked, but I had previously coated the whole thing in Valvoline Tectyl, and after cleaning out the float chamber and drowning the thing in fresh water then WD40, she's been working fine again.

It looks like as well as the 12V 55Amp and 12V 80Amp models, they now have 12V 120A and a heap of 24V units.

I run solar, and used the Christie for a top up if I had a week or two of cloud.
Some things I discovered about the 55A model. If you can charge early in the day after night time use, there's often enough solar even in cloud to trickle up the last 10%.
It only likes to put about 80-90% charge into a Deep Cycle SLA.
It can be noisy. I used to run it for 30 mins to 1 hour in the morning as soon as I arrived at an anchorage if it was cloudy (about 750ml unleaded) BEFORE other yachts arrived and let the solar take over.
It is compact. I used to keep in in a spare berth.
It only weighs about 12kg (x2.2 for lbs)

On my model, the Bosch 55A alternator is Direct-Coupled to the Honda 2.5hp 4-stroke.
The link explains more about the latest units(under 'Products')

These days multiple injuries and surgeries keep me off the water, so my live-aboard life is curtailed.
The Christie is chucked into the back of my Toyota HiAce van in case I flatten a battery when I am away somewhere.
I've never managed to flatten my own battery, but it has helped quite a few fellow travellers because it belts enough charge into a flat start battery in about 15-20 minutes to start the average Diesel or 4WD. 10 mins for most cars.
18 years of hard use, and a few things like a home made governor spring, and sorting out salt water damage after cyclone sinkings. Still working..

The 80A and 120A are 22kg and 26kg and have 3hp and 5.5hp honda engines but seem to be similar sizes to the picture in the original post.

Hope this gives you some ideas for construction. The big deal about the Christie is probably the electronic regulator unit, which seems to work like a Solar charge controller.

[reflectionsv37]

I can't think of a more costly way to charge batteries than to use a 15-20k diesel engine running at idle. Since adding my Honda generator the only time the engine is ever used to charge batteries is when I'm motoring the boat. Running a diesel engine at idle, or just above, with essentially no load, is one of the worst things you can do to it.

20 years ago I managed to get by with far less electricity. Even with the advent of LED bulbs my usage has increased dramatically. I attribute most of it to the widespread availability of the internet. 20 years ago I'd turn the computer on, connect to Airmail or Sailmail to download email, type a few responses, send those and turn the computer off. Now with video streaming and easy available, we have multiple computers on all day.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by reflectionsv37

Here's a couple photos of the Honda Genset install...

Gene

Nice simple setup

[rossdv8]

I just saw some earlier posts and came across this:

Any small engine will not be able to direct drive and still be able to get an automobile alternator to work efficiently at such a slow speed

The quote seems a little misleading, unless I misunderstood something for an earlier post, or unless the poster was referring to 2-stroke engines.

The Honda 4-stroke engine of 2.5hp that I have is direct coupled (no gears or pulley) to the Bosch 55A Car Alternator and has no problem charging a 120AH SLA battery that is showing between 10.6 - 11.4 Volts (I occasionally get down to that in summer when there is very little sun for days at a time and have the freezer running in 32 deg Celsius weather), except that the last 10% or so takes forever and is best left to the Solar Panels.

The modern little 50cc Hondas around 2.5hp spin comfortably at 7000rpm, although mine never gets anywhere near that and even when the governor spring broke, the battery loaded the alternator enough to keep it sensble. Their 100cc and 150cc engines on the bigger units have max revs of about 3500rpm, but never need to get get anywhere near that, and charge nicely.

I think it is the small 2-stroke engines that have a problem being direct coupled to an alternator!

I do agree with some comments that the design posted might be hard to cool in some situations, and I also agree with the people who warned about carbon monoxide fumes, having been surprised by a wind change one day when reading in the forward berth with the generator running in the cockpit :-(

However I think it is a clever idea and might be a bit cheaper than the AUD$900 that mine cost me. I'd hate to think what mine would be new now, 20 years on..

[RaymondR]

We have had a couple of overcast days and my solar array was only able to hold the batteries up to about 12.2 V so I did a temporary hook up to the 130 Amp alternator and ran the charger for about an hour and a half. At the moment I only have about 360 Amp hours of AGM house batteries and it pulled them up to about 13.5 V with charger of so I am fairly pleased with the performance.

I only have a 50 Amp shunt at the moment so was unable to measure the current output.

I was concerned that the reversed fans on the alternator would not pull enough air through to keep it cooled but it did not get overheated and I could put my hand on it.

I'll take this as the first commissioning test and it has encouraged me to forge ahead with the project.

The 3 mm alloy base did set up some interesting harmonics with other stuff on the deck and the exhaust noise could do with a little taming. If I decide to install a better muffler I am pondering on how I might incorporate a water heating jacket to use the waste heat for hot water. At the moment I have to run the main engine for about 40 minutes to have a hot shower.

Taken to the limit I can see this thing providing battery charging, drive for an RO high pressure pump, a calorifier for hot water and drive for an auto aircon compressor. Well on the way to the universal panacea for cruising yachties.

[GILow]

And... if you don’t fix the muffler, a guaranteed social-distancing device at anchor.

:^)

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by GILow

And... if you don’t fix the muffler, a guaranteed social-distancing device at anchor.

:^)

Years ago I had a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine with an alternator direct connected to it. I used to put a litre of fuel in it, crank it up and take off for the coffee shop. I had to move and re-anchor fairly regularly. Eventually gave it to a bloke in a 36' schooner rigged boat who used a single 12V battery and an old starter motor as his engine. He thought it would be a great help as he often failed to clear the anchorage before the battery gave out.

[rossdv8]

I saw a rig on a 26 footer similar to mine using a Briggs and Stratton instead of a Honda. While my muffler is a little noisy, he could get away with a piece of pipe into the exhaust flange. And a hose attached to that, then a wider hose etc.
Eventually the widest one exited below the water.

I don;t know what the fish made of it, but the sound when it was running was only the usual 'diesel rattle' of a B & S, and quite a bit less than my Honda made.

When I asked him about the weird hose setup, he said he's worked out that it created less back pressure, while still getting the exhaust far enough to go under the water.

I'm surprised there are not more people experimenting with this to complement the Solar on the odd times when sun is not enough. As I found out regularly, and as RaymondR posted - it often only takes half an hour to an hour and maybe a litre or two of fuel to bring a battery bank up enough to get through the next day or week.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by rossdv8

I'm surprised there are not more people experimenting with this to complement the Solar on the odd times when sun is not enough. As I found out regularly, and as RaymondR posted - it often only takes half an hour to an hour and maybe a litre or two of fuel to bring a battery bank up enough to get through the next day or week.

We have wind generators.

:^)

Edit: I admit though, some wind generators are significantly noisier than petrol generators. Luckily mine is one of the quiet ones.

[RaymondR]

The reason I used the B&S engine was that I got it cheap from a lawnmower service place. Someone had bought in a mower for engine replacement a couple of years before my inquiry and never collected it, the vendor wanted to ger his out of pocket expenses back so sold it to me at his cost.

I wanted to test the idea of having the engine mounted on deck with the alternator inside the boat. This was most readily achieved with a vertical shaft engine. However I wanted to test the idea before cutting a hole in the deck of my boat and so mounted the engine/alternator unit on deck in a plywood box.

The idea proved sound other than the excessive noise and extremely variable output of an engine without the flywheel effect of a blade disk so I then started planning the through deck version with a better engine. A Honda lawn mower engine was initially the preferred candidate however on further pondering the noise reduction problem and rough power output I hit upon the idea of using a four stroke outboard engine.

Our main engines generally don't make excessive racket. This is because of the use of a rubber hose and the water injection. The rubber hose in expanding and contracting results in an energy transfer which dampens the pressure surges and the inertial effects of accelerating water droplets has a similar effect. There is also a mass dampening effect from the water in the water jackets of water cooled engines. However exploiting these effects with a water cooled outboard introduced numerous design complexities.

The water cooled outboard engine, with the addition of a 12 V electric impeller pump to replace the drive shaft pump would be much quieter but the installation far more complex with the requirement to route the cooling water into and from the engine and exhaust discharge into the replacement exhaust routing scheme.

What eventually killed the vertical shaft option was my decision to include an air compressor using an auto aircon compressor. These are built to operate at high RPM's and also have an electric clutch and are commonly used by 4WD enthusiasts as air compressors. I could have placed a pulley between the engine output and the alternator input shaft but this then required a much larger hole on the deck and auto aircon compressors are all designed as horizontal shaft devices and lube oil problems result from trying to operate then as vertical shaft devices.

A horizontal shaft Honda was purchased and the enclosure and mounting pieces fabricated and installed on the very aft deck of my steel boat when the necessity to change boats occurred however I retained the unit when I sold the old boat hence the availability of the new Honda engine for the extant project.

Following the most successful conclusion of the test run I'm tending to a firm conclusion that the engine driven charger coupled with an adequately sized battery bank and a fairly high powered inverter is a better solution to the backup battery charger/mains power genset option.

ReflectionsV37 has done an excellent job with his (or her) installation but I tend to the opinion that doing similar with a 240 AC genset would be excessively risky and from a field servicing viewpoint less desirable than the all 12 V electrics of the stationary engine/auto alternator combination.