New Balmar Alternator Problems

[Eder]

hmmm...I have buss bar connecting all the grounds do wnstream of my shunt which i connected between the last house battery neg terminal and the buss.

I connected the 1/0 neg cable from the alternator ground to the negative terminal of the 3rd battery in my house bank. No?

[Eder]

OK...I put the new ground on the downstream side of the shunt and I am charging at 45 amps indicated....I think it is a great sucess . Thanks everyone for helping this idiot sailor!

[Badsanta]

I thought that all grounds should run to a buss bar then buss bar to shunt then to battery.

[Eder]

hmmm...would that make a difference?

[Badsanta]

On mine all the electricity has to return through the the shunt to be measured. If I connected anything below the shunt it would not be counted. Everything would work but the battery monitor would be incorrect. Mine measures the power through the negitive shunt and all power has to go through the shunt.

[Stu Jackson]

It sure would.

Wiring & Installing A Battery Monitor - SailboatOwners.com

[Eder]

Nice link wish I had that a few days ago haha. I connected alternator isolated ground to the negative buss side of the shunt ....would this be different result to connecting to negative buss to alternator? Thanks.
btw I made it to port and am charging the batterys with my 60 amp battery charger. The Xantrax is reading 17 amps charging even though the meter on the charger is showing full 60 amp charge being applied...is that normal?

[twinboat]

It would be normal if you had 43 amps going to something else, like another battery or house loads.

[Eder]

Well my alternator stator fried itself...took it to a repair shop and will be about $250 to repair. They said that I had connected the battery monitor correctly though.
Perhaps there was something wrong with the alternator originally and may explain low amp results.

[twinboat]

Make sure you hook up a temp sensor from the alt to the regulator. That way if the alt gets to hot, it will cut back to 1/2 power. I fried a 150 amp alt, charging a very low 800 AH bank. I was impressed with the 178 amp output, until it quit. The rebuilder told me I should use a 250 amp alt on that big a bank. I have no room for a large frame alt, so I set the regulator to cut back the max charge to 80% and it still sometimes cuts back to 1/2 when it gets to hot.

[Eder]

Yes...it looked like heat was present in it to say the least haha. It never did charge faster than a bit over 40 amps though so hope it will be a better unit after the rebuild.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by twinboat

Make sure you hook up a temp sensor from the alt to the regulator. That way if the alt gets to hot, it will cut back to 1/2 power. I fried a 150 amp alt, charging a very low 800 AH bank. I was impressed with the 178 amp output, until it quit. The rebuilder told me I should use a 250 amp alt on that big a bank. I have no room for a large frame alt, so I set the regulator to cut back the max charge to 80% and it still sometimes cuts back to 1/2 when it gets to hot.

That's a very good point.

A manual way to do the same thing:

Alternator heat, Regulator Controls, Small Engine Mode

Alternator heat, Regulator Controls, Small Engine Mode

Small Engine Mode - discussion with link to the picture of the toggle switch: Alternator heat, Regulator Controls, Small Engine Mode