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Old 04-03-2012, 05:07 PM   #13 (permalink)
California98Civic
Cyborg ECU
 
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Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Coastal Southern California
Posts: 6,299

Black and Green - '98 Honda Civic DX Coupe
Team Honda
90 day: 66.42 mpg (US)

Black and Red - '00 Nashbar Custom built eBike
90 day: 3671.43 mpg (US)
Thanks: 2,373
Thanked 2,172 Times in 1,469 Posts
Good luck with the further tests! Please report more on your findings. Nothing cooler than testing something and being willing to admit if the test has failed, if it has failed.

And I like the FE results you are suggesting (which confirm my similarly sketchy results). It would be nice to know if the alt really was off.

One observation: your design is simpler than the one I posted, and that cbaber linked above. But the only extra thing I did was unplug the charging light wire near the driver's side firewall grommet, right? That's reversible in 30 seconds.

Quote:
Originally Posted by steffen707 View Post
Thanks for the link, that's also a good read, but I was hoping that the grounding method would provide a more simple way to achieve alternator shut off than having to disable 2 wires, also i've heard from some ecomodders that have done the 2 wire shutoff as described in your link and that didn't work either.
I know brucepick has had difficulty with the method I describe in the linked post, but he is not sure yet what the source of the failure is. I haven't seen any others mentioning problems. Who are you referring to?

I have a voltmeter on my dash, and for what it's worth to anyone: in 7 months my alternator has not once begun charging unless I turned it on. If I drain the battery below 12.5 volts or if electrical load brings the voltage down below 12.5, it stays there, the alt does not turn on unless I flip the dash-mounted switch. Quite handy, really.

Thanks again,
james
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See my car's mod & maintenance thread and my electric bicycle's thread for ongoing projects. I will rebuild Black and Green over decades as parts die, until it becomes a different car of roughly the same shape and color. My minimum fuel economy goal is 55 mpg while averaging posted speed limits. I generally top 60 mpg. See also my Honda manual transmission specs thread.



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