alternator

[trw]

i was out driving my 4x4 Pajero the other day and i was having so much fun i was really dissappointed when the battery died, i asked my dad if he knew how an alternator worked and he explained that just by simply wraping wire around a spinning magnet....that would create electricity in the wire to run back to the battery

i was thinking maybe i could wrap some 12 or 14 gauge wire around my trucks mabuchi motor and run it the back of the battery pack....would this even work?

[SteveK]

Theoretically an alternator would work, but to have one that would produce enough energy to make a difference would add too much weight and drag to make it worthwhile.

Essentially, when your truck coasts, the motor becomes an generator, making electricity in the same way. Some ESCs use this power to recharge the batteries a little, called regenerative curcuitry, but it's not a huge difference.

An alternator isn't a horrible idea, but for the size and simplicty and cost of these cars, spending your money on better batteries is more worthwhile.

[tec_41]

Im sure someday a company will invent one for rc's. They have nos and superchargers lol, why not alternators?

[rccardude04]

The problem is, your motor is not 100% efficient, and neither is the regeneration of electricity from an alternator. Therefore, you'll never be able to recharge the batteries enough to get a solid LONG runtime. You MAY be able to get like 20 seconds more if you were bored enough. However, whatever electricity was made by your alternator would be eaten up by the motor driving the alternator that it'd cancel itself out. And you'll lose acceleration.
If you were really bored, you could put a little cox .049 on there with a lot of cox fuel and just let it run like a generator and run it through a midget charger to recharge your battery, but that would take some serious boredom.
G'luck.
-Eric