Electrical Loads
Introduction
Alternator deletes have been shown to increase fuel economy as much as 10%. Many people will not be able to remove their alternator completely however reducing the electrical loads used by your car will reduce the power the alternator takes from the engine and therefore reduced electrical loads can achieve a small amount of this 10% improvement.
Contents
Instructions for mod
Several things can be done to reduce the electrical loads in a car
-Removing light bulbs in car doors
-Remove useless indicator lights in cluster (speedometer unit)
-Disconnect any redundant break lights that aren't legally required
-Changing required cabin light bulbs to LEDs
-Change brake lights, indicator lights and parker lights to LEDs
-Disconnecting inbuilt car clock
-Not turning on radio
-Disable automatic raising/lowering of car antenna
-Reducing size of grill block so that electric fan doesn't run often
An ammeter can be used to check the current the car is taking from the batter and therefore from the alternator. Using an ammeter will give an idea of how effecting a change will be on the cars efficiency.
Without reducing the electrical load a ecomodder can control when the alternator takes energy from the drive train (desirable when the brake pedal is used). This can be done by a solenoid controlled by a switch or the brake pedal. The solenoid would connect the alternator to the battery to charge the battery only when the driver wants to take energy from the drive train to charge the battery.
User experiences
Please enter your user name and any relevant data in the table
| User Name | Car Make, Model, Year | Cost of Mod | Time to Perform Mod | MPG Before Mod | MPG After Mod | MPG improvement | Instruction Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MetroMPG | Pontiac, Firefly, 1998 | $0 | 70.68 | 78.08 | 7.4 (10.4%) | Test: Alternator vs. no alternator = 10% MPG gain @ 70 km/h | |
| saand | 0.55% for 50W theoretical calculation based on equations show in link below Antenna Efficiency Calculations | ||||||
| brucey | 00 Outback | 35.55 MPG (off) | 34.6 MPG (on) | 0.95 MPG, or around 2.5% ABA test of headlights on and off A (off) 35.5 B (on) 34.6 A2 35.6 110 watts when on. | [Experiment: The cost of Headlights] |
Problems / Consequences of mod
References
Forum thread links
Test: Alternator vs. no alternator = 10% gain @ 70 km/h
[Experiment: The cost of Headlights]
