Hello everyone,

I'm ordering new gearboxes for the main furler and main outhaul. The units can be shipped with a bare alloy finish or with a 2 pot epoxy paint. I'm curious if anyone has advice one way or the other. The paint will provide protection but will undoubtly fail at some point. The aluminum alloy should self-passivate and not continually corrode/oxidize.

Any advice from experience? Any issues in running with bare alloy, besides initial appearance? I suppose it will look better than flaking paint in the long run.

Cheers,
Mike Longcor
SV Trilogy SM23
Opua, NZ

Good Day Amelians
Recently, I was running system checks aboard s/v Spirit before a planned run from from Puerto Rico back up to Long Island NY.
My gen set shut down upon starting and indicated an error code of 3 flashes. That code asked for a second code, which when generated translated to requesting that a a certified onan technician be called.
My generator is an MDKAW circa 2005. 
When I ran it by my onan dealer back on LI, he indicated that it was the pcb board (the brain), or the whindings. Whindings checked out ok.
I contacted Onan, they had none in stock. They ran an engine down worldwide search, and still came up with none. Making matters worse, they said the company that makes the board for them is out of business (due to covid), and they don't expect to have a new supplier of this part in place for 6 to 9 months.
Fortunately, I found a parts supplier on ebay that has the part in stock. It's a few hundred dollars more then thru onan, but they have it, and it has been shipped.
The fellow I spoke to told me they had 12 in stock (it's now 11 lol). My board is a pcb board part # 327-1533
The company is Arkansas Valley Diesel Service. Phone # 719 9316003
If anyone else runs into this issue, I hope this will save them some aggravation.
Best Wishes to all Amelians.
Jeff Spirit Amel 54 #14 

Hi fellow Amel owners.

 I have never been happy with the Leece-Neville 24v 175A alternator set up on Amelia presumably as supplied by Amel. 

Namely a double V belt pulley of 230mm diameter driving a 85mm diameter pulley on the alternator. These pulleys were supplied for B section belts, i.e. 17mm across the top. There was endless belt dust and short belt life. I checked the specs on B section belts and the minimum pulley diameter should be 112mm although it is possible to buy a cogged belt that can run on a minimum 91mm diameter pulley, however in general 112mm diameter is the smallest for B section belts. So this 85mm diameter pulley was wrong for such big belts.

I found on eBay Leece-Neville part number K176101466, priced $30. This is a K section 8 groove pulley with 63mm diameter.  The bore is 7/8 inch with keyway to fit the alternator. The pulley was new and unused.

Micro v belts can go round much smaller pulleys. I think for the K section it is a minimum of 45mm. So no problem going round a 63mm pulley.

I then took the original 230mm double groove pulley, that bolts to the Volvo crankshaft to my local machine shop in the UK who milled it down to match the Leece-Neville one I bought. He did a superb job for £60. 

Please see the photos of the big pulley that has been machined down from 230mm to 200mm.

So I calculate that I now have a pulley ratio of 3.14 whilst before it was 2.7. Thus at idle (725 rpm on the engine) the alternator now runs at 2300 rpm and will be charging nicely. Where as before in idle it was running at 1957 rpm. The alternator only kicks in at 2000 rpm. So in the boat manoeuvring situation we will now have proper charge, and we all know how much power the Bowthruster uses.

The alternator is rated for a maximum RPM of 8000. The Volvo D3 has maximum rpm of about 2700 so I calculate that the maximum engine rpm will have to be 2547.

Seeing as that is really thrashing the engine and I never run it it that level apart from the once a year blast out. I will put a small sticker at the helm saying Max RPM 2500.

Total cost in US$ including new Gates Fleetrunner belt about $125.

Obviously when I get back to the boat I will have to align the alternator, but note how now both pulley are exactly the same width. It will be much easier than before where one pulley was 47mm and the other 52mm. The machine shop supplied me with a few spacers, washers of different thickness, to help but I may well have to have a washer made  for the final alignment.

Nick (in the UK)

S/Y Amelia AML 54-019 in Leros Gr

Hi Scott,

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against Lithium. I'm just trying to bring some nuance to the many über-happy stories about Lithium. These things are bloody expensive and people should know what they are getting into.
Actually I'm really happy that you bought Lithium because that means you can tell me about how this works in the long term 😎.

In the electric car world you see similar discussions about charging speed and charging level. People are now starting to find out that these batteries are degrading much faster when you are a super-charging junkie and keep pushing it to 100% SOC
So if you buy a used Tesla from a predominately home charging person that doesn't use his car as racing vehicle you are much better off then when you buy a mostly supercharged race-car. There is a reason Tesla keeps all these metrics on their cars.
Latest EV cars are charging with more then 2C (250 kW) using water cooled charging cables. I really wonder how that will work out on the long term.

Anyway I don't want to talk anyone out of Lithium and if my use case was different I probably would have bough an all singing and dancing Lithium pack by now. But I would expect a 8-10 year lifespan of it.

Regards,

Arno Luijten
SV Luna,
A54-121

Hi,
What make gearboxes are you using and where are you getting them?
If you leave the gearboxes unprotected they will look terrible in a short time.
I was considering having my gearboxes sand blasted and powder coated.
Any thoughts on that.
Fair Winds,
Eric
SM 376 Kimberlite

On September 26, 2020 at 4:10 AM "Mike Longcor (SV Trilogy)" <svtrilogy53@...> wrote:

Hello everyone,

I'm ordering new gearboxes for the main furler and main outhaul. The units can be shipped with a bare alloy finish or with a 2 pot epoxy paint. I'm curious if anyone has advice one way or the other. The paint will provide protection but will undoubtly fail at some point. The aluminum alloy should self-passivate and not continually corrode/oxidize.

Any advice from experience? Any issues in running with bare alloy, besides initial appearance? I suppose it will look better than flaking paint in the long run.

Cheers,
Mike Longcor
SV Trilogy SM23
Opua, NZ

 

HI Barry,

The trick is to buy an off the shelf small pulley. I think that Leece-Neville only do the one I bought, because I looked at the Pulley options on their website.  The shaft on the 175 A alternator is imperial 7/8 inch so you cannot just buy any old pulley, and they have a funny keyway. Anyhow they are easy to buy on eBay USA.

The small pulley nut can be undone with a ring spanner and an 8mm alan key that slots into the alternator shaft end. I cut off a section of alan key and slotted it into a ratchet handle as it requires considerable force to remove. Like 100 ft lbs!

The big pulley is easy to take off, just undo the four bolts and gently prise it off. It has a male flange/hub that sets into the crank pulley about 3mm.  If you actually have the small pulley to give to the machine shop it sure makes it easy to explain what you want. 

If you are going Lithium, you will clearly need a special regulator for the alternator with a heat sensor so it does not overheat, and you should maybe think about ducting cooling air directly at the alternator.

I wish I could  go back to the boat and fit it all and make sure it all works well. My original set up had two idler pulleys one top and one bottom. This improves the wrap, however the belt has a slack side and a tight side, and I was always told to only add the idler to the slack side, if possible. So I experimented with the old set up removing the idler on the tight side  ( bottom one), to no real improvement. My current view is that without any idler the wrap is 160 degrees, and with the top idler only, which is the slack side, it will be a bit better at say 170 degrees. These are both very good wraps.

How to decide on the pulley you need

I went about it by seeing what pulley Leece-Neville could supply. This pretty much nailed it as the biggest they had was the K section 8 rib one.

Then I looked at various websites that sell high output alternator kits and conversions and cribbed the Micro v belts that were used, and looked at the size of drive pulleys they used.

Many of these alternators are running very small pulleys like 50mm,  the drive pulleys are typically 150mm.

So they get the 3:1ratio from 150mm drive pulley and 50mm alt pulley.

We are much better off as the 230mm pulley machines down to 200mm, and we need 3:1 so 67mm would do it. The one I bought is 69mm max diameter but 63.5mm across the grooves. If making from new one could have 230mm drive pulley and a 75mm alt pulley. But that would be expensive and frankly unnecessary.

There are two forces to consider; We are think the small pulley as there is never a problem with the big one.

1. Belt wrap, i.e. friction. This is how much belt is in contact with the pulley. So the circumference of the pulley  x the proportion of the pulley wrap. So 160 degrees wrap is 160/360 x 2 x 3.14 x radius

2. then there is the lever effect which is also the radius. Imagine the belt being your arm and the radius being the length of the wrench, a short wrench needs a stronger arm.

3. then there is the width of the belt, i.e. number of ribs. 6,8, 10 or even 12.

Clearly by going for smaller pulleys you add load on the belt. Not only from less surface area in contact with the pulley but also the shorter turning moment.

Looking at these web sites they all use serpentine (micro v belts) and either 6, 8 or 10 ribbed belts. 

Having decided that we are in the right ball park, and seeing as Leece-Neville sell that pulley a their top one I was happy with the engineering choice.

Then I thought it would be interesting to calculate how many KW such a belt would support;

Now I am not 100% sure, so any engineer who knows better please correct me but

by the tables I think that the 8 rib belt should be able to run 8 X 0.41KW assuming 120 degree wrap and a belt tension of 10kg per rib on a 45mm pulley.

That is 3280 Watts with a belt tension of 80Kg. However we have better wrap so could add 40% = 4592 watts. 

This is 170A  at 27v for a 45mm pulley, but we are running a 63.5mm pulley so the radius is increased from 22.5 to 31.5 which is another 40%. Which works out to 238A at 27v.

So in conclusion we could reduce the belt tension slightly by experiment. You want it so that it does not slip at maximum output. I intend to watch the belt, run the engine at say 1500 rpm and engage the bow thruster. If it does not slip then, reduce the tension slightly until you get slip then tighten it a bit. I have a Kriket tension gauge. I reckon it will be at about 75kg. Which is pretty tight, but the belt gates specs about 100kg.

It has been a fun project.

Nick (in the UK)

Amelia AML 54-019 in Leros.

On 24 Sep 2020, at 14:18, Barry Connor via groups.io <connor_barry@...> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: Barry Connor <connor_barry@...>
Date: September 24, 2020 at 09:14:24 AST
To: ngtnewington@...
Subject: Re:  Amel 54 alternator belts

Hi again Nick,
Just wanted to add.
In my project changing to Lithium with Oliver on “Vela Nautica” help and guidance I was going to disconnect the engine alternator from the charging system.
Thanks to you I will now add the engine alternator back into the system with a charge controller for the Lithium batteries.
I have added the pulley and belt you showed to my Ebay buy list. Just got to find a machine shop here in very expensive Le Marin to machine the engine pulley.
Thanks and Very Best Regards

Barry and Penny
“SV Lady Penelope II”
Amel 54. #17
Sainte Anne anchorage Martinique

Any idea if antennas are the same?