Brief Description: Primary Alternator Installation & Wiring - Part 1
HOBBS Meter: 1611 Hours
The RV-8 will have a 60 Amp Plane Power primary alternator that will be driven by a belt off the front of the engine. The alternator is mounted to a boss on the bottom of the engine crankcase and is attached with a large bolt. The swing arm is used to adjust the tension of the belt. The installation of the alternator itself went pretty smoothly and everything fit nicely.
There are two wires that go to the alternator. The main wire is an 8 gauge lead that supplies the 60 Amps of power to the VP-200 electrical system. The second wire is a smaller wire that allows the VP-200 to turn the alternator on and off and is generally referred to as the "Field" lead. I had originally pulled these two wires just bare, but then decided that I really should add some spiral wrap to them for better protection and to hold them together better through the complicated routing necessary.
The wires snake their way back to the firewall, where I added a 60 Amp current limiter (kind of a fuse of sorts) and then from there over to the input post on the starter relay. I also ran the Field wire along with the output wire and connected it to the Field output from the VP-200 that I had stubbed out to the firewall when I was originally doing the avionics and electrical wiring.
As you can see from the VP-200 display pictures, the Primary Alternator Field is correctly powering up and pulling 4.9 Amps. I noticed that the pulley on the alternator is much harder to turn with the Field engaged and this is as it should be. The last VP-200 display shows that the PRI alternator is currently the active one. Once the Secondary alternator is in, I should be able to switch back and forth between them at will.
I'm very pleased with the Primary alternator wiring. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to do it when I started today, and per usual it only took two tries to get it right!!
