Corvair Rear Alternator

Description

Overview: The rear alternator is designed to use the John Deere style permanent magnet generator and regulator that the Corvair community has used for years. It is mounted on the rear of the engine on a CNC cut bracket. The drive has two pins which fasten in the Harmonic balancer puller holes. These pins have rubber bushings on them which fit inside a drive plate on the generator. This drive plate replaces the forward half of the generator pulley. This arrangement puts no overhanging, or radial loads on the crankshaft. The bushings in socket allow a minor degree of misalignment.

This unit has run on the Panther LS N515XP prototype (70 hours of run time as of 1/11/2014) and proven to put out the results below.

Engine RPM AMP output

850(idle) 1-2 (erratic output)

1200 3

1800 10

2850 20

The idle amp seems low and likely would not turn off the charge indicator light.

While we were running we tested the amp draw to the ignition system at full throttle. It used .7 amps! We later tested our Glasairs facet fuel pump. It pulled just over 1 AMP. This is in line with numbers from Pegasus Racings Website. The radio and EIS only pull 1 AMP. Modern lights dont consume much either. The biggest thing to consider is that this type systems doesn’t regulate power output, it just burns the excess up and turns it into heat, which is dissipated through the regulators cooling fins. You dont want to make much more power than you use.

We recommend the Corvair for day VFR Aircraft and feel this system will easily power most aircraft in this class. We will also be testing the 3 phase version of this unit which should produce 30% more power.