Charging System Upgrade Project

[NYSail]

I will check when I get to boat this morning.... My panel is very basic and does not have an amp meter...... just a couple of wires but right now my mind forgot all the connections and wire colors I made. Will check and drop you a message later.

Greg

 

[Maine Sail]

@NYSail There is also a single orange/blue wire from the Yanmar harness which I believe would be the ignition input to the regulator (brown wire), but I do not see this wire color in the council?

On Yanmar engines you would connect Balmar brown/ignition feed to the red wire in the T plug. The orange wire is a tachometer AC pulse, if your engine uses the alternator stator pulse to run the tach. Your engine may have a tach sensor in the bell housing so, in this case, orange may not be used on your particular harness. If orange was connected to the old alt then your tach is alternator pulse driven..

Also make darn sure your MC-614 red/regulator power wire in the black Ford plug is on the alternator side of the Service Disconnect Switch so the regulator can't boot up into an open circuited alternator.

 

[dlochner]

Also make darn sure your MC-614 red/regulator power wire in the black Ford plug is on the alternator side of the Service Disconnect Switch so the regulator can't boot up into an open circuited alternator.

Rod, you have mentioned this before. If the alternator output goes directly to the battery, then the regulator would always be powered up. Or am I missing something? Other than increasing the drain on the battery, is there a downside to this?

Thanks, Dave

 

[DayDreamer41]

On Yanmar engines you would connect Balmar brown/ignition feed to the red wire in the T plug. The orange wire is a tachometer AC pulse, if your engine uses the alternator stator pulse to run the tach. Your engine may have a tach sensor in the bell housing so, in this case, orange may not be used on your particular harness. If orange was connected to the old alt then your tach is alternator pulse driven..

Also make darn sure your MC-614 red/regulator power wire in the black Ford plug is on the alternator side of the Service Disconnect Switch so the regulator can't boot up into an open circuited alternator.

Rod,
I connected the red from the Ford plug to the output terminal on the back of the alternator, so yes it is on the alternator side of the service switch. I would imagine the sensing line fused at 1 amp is preferred at the house bank positive terminal where the connection is made from the alternator + to the battery bank.
Mark

 

[Maine Sail]

Rod, you have mentioned this before. If the alternator output goes directly to the battery, then the regulator would always be powered up. Or am I missing something? Other than increasing the drain on the battery, is there a downside to this?

Thanks, Dave

The MC-614 regulator is not powered up until it sees a signal from the ignition feed/brown wire. The MC-614 actually requires three + signals to work.

Regulator Red Wire - (red wire in black Ford plug)
Regulator Brown Wire - Ignition feed signal (brown wire in Ford Plug)
Terminal #9 - Regulator positive voltage sensing (wire not included)

A service disconnect switch allows a technician to ensure there is no live 12V power at the engine when the alt is direct wired to the battery bank.. If the technician who worked on the engine forgets, and leave this switch open, and the regulator is wired incorrectly, the reg can boot up and drive the alt at full field into zero load. Eventually the alt goes POP....

As long as regulator red/power/Regulator B+, stays on the alt side of the service disconnect switch, the regulator can't boot with the service disconnect switch open.

 

[Maine Sail]

I connected the red from the Ford plug to the output terminal on the back of the alternator, so yes it is on the alternator side of the service switch.

Excellent!

I would imagine the sensing line fused at 1 amp is preferred at the house bank positive terminal where the connection is made from the alternator + to the battery bank.
Mark

Alternators & Voltage Sensing Why It Matters (LINK)

 

[DayDreamer41]

@Maine Sail I have never thought of the negative side of the conductance loop, but when considering voltage drop I see now where it will effect the efficiency of the high end equipment I am buying up to, with that said I am going to route the negative side of the voltage sensing equation to the negative end opposite to the positive of the battery bank.
Thanks again for your insight into the nuances of charging system setup.

 

[Sumner]

Consider using golf cart batteries. Your back will thank you. With 4 GCs wired in series/parallel you can get 460 ah of capacity.

I agree and for a lot less money. We have 480 watts on the Endeavour and 4 6v Trojans and that has worked well for us with never having to run another charging source the last 2 months out. We have a fridg/freezer but probably not the loads you have. With 640 watts of solar I think I'd try and move up to over 600 ah of capacity,

Sumner
===========================================================================
1300 miles to The Bahamas and Back in the Mac...
Endeavour 37 Mods...
MacGregor 26-S Mods...http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner/endeavour-main/endeavour-index.html
Mac Trips to Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Canada, Florida, Bahamas

 

[DayDreamer41]

Ok, I completed all my charging system upgrades this past weekend I was also able to move (2) of the T105's from under the nav seat to under the cabin sole just in front of the head. This allows for a much shorter positive cable running from the alternator directly to the batteries. I purchased a poly battery box sized for (4) T105's which fit nicely with a very slight modification to the supporting sub-flooring below the cabin sole where Hunter mounts the 4D battery for the optional bow thruster. This lowers approximately 130# by about 2' and moves it closer to the boats centerline by about 2'. This leaves (2) T105's under the nav seat where I had to run the negative 2/0 cable directly from the alternator.
There is a Cole Hershey solenoid on the main distribution panel mounted below the nav seat. This solenoid joins the house and start banks when the ignition is on, the trouble with this arrangement is, if your start battery has insufficient voltage it will not close the solenoid which removes the ability to use the house bank to start the engine.
So in order to remedy this, there is a set of jumpers on the panel that run from the rotary switches (house and start isolation switches) to either side of the solenoid, so when the solenoid closes it connects the (2) banks, the issue being if the starter battery is dead the solenoid won't close, I am going to remove these jumpers and solenoid, replace the jumpers with longer cables to either side of a Blue Seas 7622 ACR (with remote control), this will allow a couple for a couple of improvements, first the start battery will experience a better charge profile being provide from the new charging system and will also allow me to manually close the magnetic latching relay in the ACR to join the two banks if the needed to start the engine.

For those of you with this power distribution panel a far less expensive but more risky method of joining the (2) banks would be to rewire the trigger wire (yellow with red tracer) for the solenoid to the get its 12 V source from the house bank, the problem with this is if one was to leave the switch on it could drain down your house bank.