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I’m not an auto
electrician, and am therefore not qualified to spout definitively about
electrics. I have however been around engines and wiring for about 35
years, and have learned (often painfully) a bit about it.
Here are a few basic
pointers though.
CAUTION!
Always disconnect
the (-) negative battery cable before
working on the buggy's electrics.
Use only a sealed battery; for
safety's sake you shouldn't use a refillable battery.
Keep it simple. Where possible, extend wires with the same colour/trace
as the original, or replace the entire length with a
new, suitably sized wire
of a different colour.
Install a battery master switch (BMS), observing any race sanctioning
rules as to its placement.
Mount a "pull on/push off" kill switch on the steering wheel or on
the dash, close to your hand, which when hit in an emergency, will
cut
the ignition circuit and fuel pump.
If fitted to your
motor’s gearbox, do use the neutral indicator switch, and connect
it to a blue light in the dash (you'll thank me for
that one). Don’t forget to earth the side stand
switch, and any other “safety” switches that may prevent the motor from
starting.
At
the rear, mount a high-level red brake light, and an
orange dust light. The
dust light must be wired through the ignition switch so that it is on
when the motor is running.
Use the best connectors you can afford, and solder them
to the wires and cables.
Those so-called "insulated" crimp connectors are notorious for causing
hard-to-find
electrical faults.
Only use sealed switches.
Once all the wires are hooked up, seal the
connections with brush-on Liquid Tape.
Ensure all wiring is bundled tightly and secured to the chassis with
cable ties or Velcro straps every 100mm.
Some racers
prefer to remove the alternator to save weight and the drain
it has on the engine’s power. The alternator
on some bike motors is easily removed by un-doing a few screws and
fitting a simple blanking plate over the alternator aperture. If running
without an alternator, fit a plain BMS on the battery’s earth cable.
Removing the
alternator though, has one very obvious penalty; a suitable battery must
be fitted to cope with, and last the duration of, any event the buggy
will run in. A battery in good condition should be capable of providing
enough power for about half an hour’s racing, without any charge being
applied to it.
Having two batteries can be one way around the problem at sprint races
at least. One battery is carried in the buggy, while the second is
hooked up to your tow-car’s charging system while you’re racing. The
batteries can then be swapped over between sprints.
Endurance races pose
a problem though, as they run in excess of half an hour.
There is another
solution. The alternator can be left in situ, but the drain on the
engine’s power can be eliminated as and when required.
There is a proprietary box of tricks on sale, which does just this, but
a little ingenuity and backyard electrickery will produce an effective
and cheap alternative.
With
an alternator, the regulator monitors the number of amps being produced,
and manages the alternator’s output. The alternator requires electrical
excitement before it will produce any charge at all, and the clever
little regulator also manages the amount of excitement the alternator
receives. If the regulator was to be switched off, the alternator would
not produce any power, thereby its load on the
engine would be gone, releasing more power from it. If a switch was to
be fitted to your buggy’s dash, you could flip the switch and dump all
the alternator's output to earth during races, and flip it on again in the pits
to charge the battery.
Fantastic! Quick,
go and buy a toggle switch and mount it on the dash.
Not so fast there!
There’s a little bit more to it than that.
When (not if) you
have a racing accident, and a Marshal removes the key from your BMS, the
alternator could be damaged if the BMS is turned off while the engine’s
running. A basic BMS has just two large terminals, which are hooked up
to the battery’s earth cable, and merely cuts the power from the
battery,
but it doesn’t address the residual current from the
alternator.
What you need is a BMS with four additional (usually standard blade
type) terminals.
One pair of blade
terminals opens and closes along with the main switch, which connects
the alternator's exciter circuit. A separate
dash-mounted switch can then be used to break
the connection to the alternator when the engine’s running.
In the event you are on your roof with the engine still running, the key
can be pulled from the BMS, whereupon the Alternator Field Disconnect
leaps into action. The AFD switch closes
before the main and exciter switches (and opens before they do too). The
AFD allows residual current from the alternator to be dumped to earth
through a 3 Ohm, 11 Watt ceramic resistor. Thus damage to the
alternator’s diodes is prevented, and the whole ignition and electrical
system is rendered inert.
Most BMS plastic
keys are red for easy visibility, and often have a small hole in them. I
usually thread a bit of 300
lb nylon fishing line
through it, using an aluminium fishing line crimp to secure the loop. I then crimp an
electrical
6mm ring crimp to the other end, and put it over one of the BMS mounting
screws, so the key can never get lost.
Another use of the hole is to connect a throttle type cable to it, and
run the cable inside the “office” to an old-fashioned
pull type choke knob . In the event of a big “off”, not only can
you hit the normal kill-switch, but you can also pull on the cable,
disconnecting the BMS. Just don't get the two knobs
confused!
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