Voltage Regulators with Higher Output (EarthX Battery)

[Bryan Cotton]

Aircraft electrical connections are no place for auto zone, especially the hi current alternator leads. Use faston stud type terminals and bolt together or use a stud type terminal strip. If bolting together cover with shrink tubing but do not shrink to allow for cooling of the joint.

Agreed. This is temporary to see if the John Deere regulator is working. I'm going to switch to a 10ga Deans connector for the stator. I hate spade terminals.

[bvolcko38]

I wouldn't use connectors fro Autozone. I got my spade connectors from B&C...AMP spade connectors and a good ratcheting crimper

[daleandee]

Saw a report here many years ago of someone who had a VR burn through the thin SS firewall, and with the fuel tank right behind that, I mounted mine on a slightly heavier piece of SS, hat shaped for about 1/2" clearance. It is big enough to hold a small relay and a filter capacitor. Best cooling of the VR will be with its fins oriented vertically.

David A.

I remember seeing a similar photo (maybe the one you're referring to) of a Jabiru 3300 regulator that caught fire and seriously burned the regulator and the firewall. This is the reason I use a dynamo relay with an OV protection circuit. The relay should be wired into one of the AC lines from the generator and not the 12 volt line to the battery. The reason being that if the relay is in the output line of the regulator when an overvoltage event occurs then you have no way to to shut off the power to the regulator itself. Putting the relay in one of the AC lines fixes this problem.

I agree with others about using high quality connectors and also with those saying to use a quality ratcheting crimper. I'm still using spade connectors but have seriously considered changing them over to a terminal stud strip.

Dale
3.0 Corvair/Tailwheel

[Bryan Cotton]

Follow up: We flew for 0.9 hours, with pretty much everything on except the secondary. We exceeded 14V pretty quickly, like a minute or two. By 5 or 6 minutes we had stabilized around 14.5-14.6V. So, it seems good.

I made this cooling tin:

side view VR cooling tin.png (578.87 KiB) Viewed 7405 times

inside view VR cooling tin.png (546.74 KiB) Viewed 7405 times

Here it is on the regulator. Air from the blast tube goes in the middle, then it has to flow out left and right past the fins to escape.

cooling tin on VR.png (533.33 KiB) Viewed 7405 times

I used a silicon 1/2" hose. I used a 1/2" aluminum tube flared at one end for both hose ends.

hose routing.png (779.06 KiB) Viewed 7405 times

So stealing a little air from the engine plenum to cool the VR.

[Skippydiesel]

Hi Brian,

My Son made me a Voltage Regulator cooling shroud, much like yours, except he used CAD & printed it out on a 3D printer - very nice.
My Regulator is on the cockpit side of the firewall & gets its cooling air from a T piece (also printed) in one of the cabin air inlets.
I have not flown with this yet but hope to finalise all mods and be flying within a week - 10 days
I would send photos but unfortunately have tried in the past, without success.

[Markmb2]

I have just fitted the VR suggested by Jeff and all seems OK apart from my tacho now reads massively over once the Alternator kicks in. I have an Aerovee, MGL Discovery Lite iEFIS and an RADC XF. The feed tacho feed is from the VR and I have added a wire from the IGN terminal on the VR to the Master Solenoid. All the other wiring is as is.

For info, the reason why I fitted the Caltric VR was to try to get a better charge from my Odessey 625 battery as the standard 3 pin unit doesn't seem to cut it. Basically with both Primary and Secondary ignitions on, and Rpm below 2000 I'm getting Low Voltage Massages on the iEFIS and my radio transmission are clipped due to insufficient volt / amp. The Battery is new and fully charged on a trickle charger in my hangar.

Any advice please.

Regards

Mark

[Bryan Cotton]

I have just fitted the VR suggested by Jeff and all seems OK apart from my tacho now reads massively over once the Alternator kicks in. I have an Aerovee, MGL Discovery Lite iEFIS and an RADC XF. The feed tacho feed is from the VR and I have added a wire from the IGN terminal on the VR to the Master Solenoid. All the other wiring is as is.

For info, the reason why I fitted the Caltric VR was to try to get a better charge from my Odessey 625 battery as the standard 3 pin unit doesn't seem to cut it. Basically with both Primary and Secondary ignitions on, and Rpm below 2000 I'm getting Low Voltage Massages on the iEFIS and my radio transmission are clipped due to insufficient volt / amp. The Battery is new and fully charged on a trickle charger in my hangar.

Any advice please.

Regards

Mark

Mark,
Welcome to the forum. On your other thread there were people able to give advice on the MGL settings and hopefully you can continue to figure that out. I'll just mention that the John Deere VR mentioned in this thread has been one of my favorite upgrades. I don't have the same avionics you do - I have a Brauniger Alpha MFD. Going from the stock Sonex VR to this one has been a non-issue with respect to RPM readings.

One thing that I have observed with this system is you have to connect to the correct leg of the AC input to the VR. In my case, one of the AC inputs on the VR is grounded and that gave me a zero RPM indication. It might be worth a try to swap the input to your tach to the other lead and see what happens. Maybe you have connected to the grounded side of the Caltric VR, buy your system is more sensitive and picking up high frequency noise.

[Markmb2]

Thanks Bryan,

It appears that some VR’s do not work correctly in some configurations, I think mine is one such. I have swopped the Tach feed to the other AC tag but to no avail. I have changed some of the Dip switches on the RDAC which did make a difference. However it seems that once the battery has gotten back to be fully charged and the VR ramps down the amps going to the battery, then the Tacho signal becomes unreliable.

I may have to go back to the Sonex supplied VR, which is disappointing as the Caltric made a big difference to the charging amps and the Bus voltage. Or take a Tacho feed from somewhere else

Regards

Mark

Regards Mark

[Bryan Cotton]

Mark,
ebay in the UK seems to have one genuine MIA881279:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/113344886165

I would avoid anything from china. I've had some bad luck there.

Also one thing to try would be to improve your VR grounding (earthing?). On mine I run a dedicated ground wire to my ground block rather than rely on the connection through the firewall to ground.

[Markmb2]

The part I purchased came directly from Caltric so assume it is genuine, it was packaged in a Caltric box, however the box had the words “made in China” on it!!!
I will run a separate earth as a last ditch trial before I return to the standard unit