Cliff Shaw wrote:
> I had a concern regarding my regulator. I bought a new
> unit from Lockwood and temporally installed it
> yesterday.
> I was worried that the charge voltage was too low. It
> read 13.5 volts when the load was about 4 amps. The new
> regulator was exactly the same.
>
> Your concern of voltage fluctuation was not observed on
> either of my regulators. They did very .2 volts with
> the landing lights turn on, but I expected that.
Cliff
It would appear to me that the latest regulators (RRs) do
not put out a decent voltage until they are run at higher
engine rpm.
However my concern is not a visible voltage fluctuation.
The battery is a fine "damper" mechanism to remove any
visible fluctuations of voltage.
What I am getting is a visible current fluctuation, which
I believe is _caused_ by a less visible voltage fluctuation.
My ammeter (which is analog) shows this oscillation. It
would not show up on any digital readouts.
In addition I note that the cruising voltage seems to be
higher than it was before (14.1 v rather than 13.8 v). Not
significantly. And of course the VDO guages do not give
exact readings, but there is an apparent difference
between the old and new voltage.
So far I have tried a total of 4 new RRs (two from
Lockwood and two from the UK suppliers). They ALL
fluctuate in this way on my aircraft (and with one of
them) on another Europa.
I have tried three other RRs, made much earlier and they
do not fluctuate on my aircraft or on the aircraft they
came from.
Although it seems incredible, the logical deduction is
that there is a faulty batch or that the design has been
changed. The UK suppliers are on the case. They have been
informed of the tests and the results and they are
pressing Rotax in Austria for a further test and a
response. I await their reply. (It won't be swift !)
The RRs that work OK are date stamped (approx) Jan 01 and
Jan 02. The third was so old it had black goo in the back
rather than green goo.
Of the four which fluctuate the two from Lockwood were
dated Oct 05, and the two from the UK supplier were dated
Jan 06.
Paul McAllister said
> Did your friend who did the testing ever come up with a
> more robust design ?
I am sure that this may be the way to go. I did find
details of another design from someone in Finland. Or
maybe it was Denmark or even Norway. The .pdf had lots of
letter oscar with a line through it !
Steen Gruby. I chased through Google and wrote him an
email but didn't hear anything back.
Does anyone else know the name ?
Richard
G-OWWW High Cross
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