New Alternator and Smart Charger

Hi everyone,
We've continued to be busy over the last ten days.  We managed to get a sail in too.

Our engine problem is now fixed.  One of the injectors wasn't seating properly, and was fixed by fitting new washers and O-ring.  We'll have to do our speed trial again since it seems we may have been running on two cylinders last time!

With the engine fixed we could then fit and test our new engine start battery, alternator and smart regulator.  The battery is a Lifeline AGM starting battery.  The alternator is a Balmar 60-series, 120Amp unit.  The regulator is a Balmar ARS-5.  The alternator fits with about 2mm to spare at the rear and 10mm to spare at the front.

New alternator mounted

The battery is installed in the engine bay to minimise the cable run lengths.  The engine now starts immediately.

The battery isolation switch, smart regulator and a custom switch box are mounted in the cockpit locker to permit observation and switching from the helm.  The switch box allows for quick switching between smart regulator and the "dumb" regulator built into the alternator, and selection of "small engine" mode which halves the load on the engine when all its power is needed for propulsion.

Switch box, alternator controller and battery isolation switch

Other jobs we've done include:

• Removed 20 year old insulation tape from engine electrical harness, clean up and resecured;
• Cleaned and repainted locker in which engine control panel is mounted;
• Cleaned and repainted fridge locker;
• Polished lots of stainless steel;
• Cleaned growth around waterline every few days (since the waterline is above the anti foul!); and
• Tested the HF radio by doing skeds with catamaran "Better Than Shares" on their way to Dili.

And we went for a sail!  The winds were light, and decreased eventually to nothing, but it was a great sail.  We hoisted our MPS/asymmetric for the first time.

MPS

Zen Again sailing

Thanks to The Doctor for taking several photos as we sailed past.