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At 05:43 PM 2/22/2005 -0500, you wrote:
Bill Dube wrote:
The claim that it won't overvoltage is absolutely false. In the bottom of the picture on the right. That is the regulator. It works by dumping excess energy to ground.
How do you know this?
Because that is how PM generators work.
Ok. You caught me. I don't know that is what it is. But do a google search on motorcycle regulators and you'll find an awful lot of generators and regulator that look exactly like this, along with explanations of how the work and how they break.
The small size of the regulator lead me to think otherwise, that is why I asked. To dissipate 250 watts, the heat sink would have to be quite large.
I suspect that they have a buck converter or some other sort of switching regulator in that small box. You can build a cheaper switching regulator than you can a shunt regulator these days. The increased efficiency of a switching regulator reduces the size of the power silicon and the size of the heat sink, thus reducing the overall cost.
Older motorcycles do indeed use a shunt regulator.
WooHoo! I just found one that I was looking at earlier. But my $100 figure was wrong. More like...you guessed it...$250. The $100 was just the stator.
http://www.chopperscycle.com/page/VTS/CTGY/40-173
I wonder what the dimensions of these are?
Here are some cheaper ones:
http://www.chopperscycle.com/page/VTS/PROD/40-173/28937
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