I live near an Amish community. They are required to use lights on their horse drawn buggies at night. They use 12V marine batteries which last about 7 to 10 hours. Then they have the non-Amish neighbors charge them, or use a gas generator. I was talking to one of them and he said he would like to connect a car alternator to the wheels. I told him that seems doable. That got me thinking. Wiring a delco with built in regulator is easy. There are two problems.
- Mounting it so a pulley can be connected to the wooden spoke wheel hub. I can sort of see a means to attach a belt pulley, but the belt would have to connect to a shaft or it would be outside too far.
- Alternators will not charge until they reach a specific RPM. I doubt the buggy wheels would reach that. This means a gear assembly would be needed to increase the rpm. I also heard that some tractor alternators charge at a lower RPM, so I have to check into that.
Anyone have any suggestions? What could I steal a simple gear unit from? How do I attach a pulley to a wooden hub, spoke wheel? Has anyone ever done anything like this?
I'm having fun with this project....
Alvin