[C38] Battery box rebuild

[Les]

Hi, Tom,
	I changed out the engine to a Universal XP25B, and it has the voltmeter
on its control panel.  

	I had already made the change on my old power panel.  I never liked
high amperage running to the power panel in the first place.  

	One note to others with the XP25B mod in mind, the standard alternator
is a 35A, and the connection wire from it to the starter (the positive
common on all most all engine installations) is a #10 wire buried in the
wiring harness.  Mine burnt and opened, so I lost charging current.  I
noticed it right away, but didn't see the problem, so I thought the
alternator had failed.  Brian Tansey of Mechanical Marine diagnosed the
problem and repaired it, but it was quite expensive because the
alternator had to be removed to access the wiring harness and remove and
replace the wire to the alternator.  I had them put the new wire on the
outside of the harness (such a high current wire should not be inside a
wire bundle anyway).

	I also changed the autopilot.  Mine was less than reliable due to
weakness in the mount for the servo, so I replaced the Autohelm with a
WheelPilot.  It is a neat installation, and designed to fit the Edson
Pedestal.  It works great, and I use an Eagle chart plotter at the
wheel.  It can use the Navionics charts, and seems spot on.

	I fabricated a mount for the eagle out of mahogheny and it clamps to
the pedestal guard.  It is designed so I can swivel it around and watch
it from the dodger.  The wheel pilot has a remote and I can steer from
the dodger as well.  This arrangement has suited us quite well over the
last couple of years.

	I am wiring up a new power panel this weekend, and it will be ready to
install by Monday or Tuesday I hope.

Regards,
Les H

On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 20:27 -0400, Tom T. wrote:
> Hi Les,
> 
> I just enlarged my battery box to hold two group 31 batteries instead of
> the smaller original group 24s.  I fabricated a common hold down clamp
> instead of using nylon straps but that is a minor issue.  You will get more
> amp hours from the golf cart batteries than using group 31s but I'm sure
> the project will be more complicated.  If you still have an amp meter on
> your engine panel, you will gain a lot of engine charging if you replace
> the amp meter with a voltmeter and run the alternator output to the
> batteries instead of to the engine panel.  This is a highly recommended
> Catalina upgrade for both safety and charging performance.  I think I may
> still have the information that I wrote for Mainsheet some time back
> detailing the conversion.
> 
> It seems you have put a lot of thought in your electric needs but I do have
> one other suggestion that regards the auto pilot.
> 
> If you use a bungee cord on the wheel to neutralize the helm, it will
> almost eliminate the current needs of the auto pilot.  When I first tried
> this, my servo motor was hot to the touch.  After using a bungee cord, the
> motor cooled to near ambient temperature and almost no load on my battery,
> even in rough seas.  The bungee will increase your battery life as well as
> take wear and tear off of the expensive steering servo motor which will
> fail if allowed to overheat.  The nylon gears tend to melt without the
> bungee if you run the auto helm with a lot of weather helm like reaching in
> heavy seas.
> 
> Good luck,
> Tom Troncalli
> Renata #95
> 
> 
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Les <hlhowell at pacbell.net>
> > To: <Listserve at catalina38.org>
> > Date: 3/20/2009 4:03:12 PM
> > Subject: [C38] Battery box rebuild
> >
> > Hi, everyone,
> > 	I am finally ready to do my rewiring project.  The first thing I want
> > to do is modify the battery box to accept 4 golf cart batteries.  I seem
> > to remember that someone said they had already done this, so I am
> > looking for pictures/process to help me avoid mistakes.
> >
> > 	I think from my measurements that the box needs to stretch about 2.5"
> > port to starboard, and I can rip out the 2" or so divider, and replace
> > it with about a 3/4" inch one in that new dimension.  This would move
> > the inboard battery about 3-3.5" beneath the current seat edge, so that
> > would probably have to change as well.  I think I could probably just
> > cut the new desired dimension out of the top, remove the large end of
> > the box and extend it 1.5".  However this may encounter some issues as
> > it approaches the truncated end of the settee by the galley cabinet.
> >
> > 	The center divider could be cut out, and fiberglass tape used to repair
> > the box bottom, with a new divider tabbed in place by the same method.
> > Probably 1/2" marine ply covered with a layer or two of cloth or tape.
> > The outboard end would be stretched 1-2" and re-attached with glass tape
> > as well.  This would give me a box that measured about 22.5" 
> > by 16" and the batteries are 10" by 7", so they would fit with some room
> > to spare.  Nylon straps across the battery tops would hold them in
> > place.
> >
> > I plan to add bus bars as well to make the connections cleaner.  I no
> > longer have a batterycharger there because I have two 65Watt solar
> > panels to maintain the batteries.  This gives me a charge current at
> > just under 9A peak, and here in CA, this gives me about 50AH/day.  This
> > seems to be enough to let me run the refer with no impact.  At anchor I
> > would have to run the engine about 4 hours every 5th day to replenish
> > the house draw (we're relatively frugal on power).  We use about 4
> > lights during meal times (6A for 2 hours) and 2 lamps for reading (3A
> > for 3-4 hours).
> >
> > Under sail, the autopilot draws about 1.2A, so it would deplete the
> > battery in about 50 hours with the instruments and refer running at the
> > same time, so about every other day for 4 hours when under sail and auto
> > pilot full time.
> >
> > 	My total instrumentation is a knotmeter, a depth sounder, GPS, VHF, and
> > Autopilot.  The knotmeter is very low drain, the depth sounder about
> > 0.25A average, and the GPS is about 0.75A in daylight, a bit higher at
> > night.  The vhf draws about 0.25 in standby.  Thus my total draw is
> > about 2.25A continuous underway under sail, and add about 2A for running
> > lights at night (we are coastal sailors and don't do much night
> > sailing).
> >
> > 	My engine has a 35A alternator which seems adequate (the batteries
> > typically drop to bulk at about 12A after 20min run time.)
> >
> > So how does this measure up to those with more experience?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Les H
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
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