slipped on the keyboard - sent partial message!

What I meant to say in the garbled message was that the work done will be
the same whether you use on or two alternators.

Maybe David means that if your van's electrical system is drawing close to
110 amps then splitting the job between two (close to 55 amps each) is less
"stressful" on each alternator.

I can see an advantage to having 2 alternators (do they have to be matched?
I don't think so) where one is dedicated to the house battery and the other
to the starting battery. That way the charging/output characteristics of
each alternator can be matched to the battery served.

 Mind you, you can get a honking big (externally regulated too) alternator
that would supply all the electrons a vanagon owner could possibly need
(mmm, I sound a bit like B. Gates musing over the need for more than 604kb
of RAM), and they look like they are not much bigger than a 90A unit. Then
you won't have the problem of mounting 2 alternators (maybe easy, maybe
not).

Alistair

--
'82 Westy -> diesel converted to gas in '94
albell@uvic.ca
http://homepage.mac.com/alistairbell/home/

on 13/04/2002 7:07 AM, Alistair Bell at albell@uvic.ca wrote:

> have to be picky on this...work involved is same wheher one or two
> alternators (110V*14V
>
>
> on 12/04/2002 9:34 PM, David Marshall at vanagon@VOLKSWAGEN.ORG wrote:
>
>> The ultimate is to use two alternators - there are factory brackets for this
>> and it is healthier for each alternator as they will be producing less
>> current and not working as hard to achieve 110A
>>
>> David Marshall
>