gas golf cart starters

I have read about such systems on cars but haven't seen them. I imagine that golf carts are maintained better than cars and aren't used in winter. Can you imagine hundreds of motorists stalled at every light? If the system is ever used, I want stock in the starter motor companies.

Test-drive a Honda Civic hybrid... The behavior is pretty close...

Henry Bibb

I think it is because most humans are stupid. You can't expect a mindless drone to be able to drive a vehicle at 60Mph if torque is applied / removed during driving. Engine RPM has to be matched to transmission input RPM when it is started back up.

Rich

It has been used, but not efficiently. You have to realize that golf carts are driven for a couple of minutes and then parked for a few minutes. Cars on the other hand are usually not parked for that long, or not for a predictable time while in traffic. It also takes quite a bit of energy to start a large motor and I'm not sure if current technology in the battery/ starter system would prove much more energy efficient than idling. There would also be a hit on overall pollution. A cold cylinder will not efficiently burn the fuel charge, the rich mixture to start the engine will wash the cylinder walls and promote wear. Many things involved in this idea that need to be overcome to make it better than idling for a short time. lg no neat sig line

Actually, GM had a truck on the road to prove this technique out. It had a large battery pack/bank, and the truck actually ran on Electricity initially or to get going. The key part of this system was not a traditional Starter, but a completely reworked starting system hat virtually was built around the trucks flywheel. It in itself was both an AC generator that put out common household voltage, AND a Starter. Having those large dimensions really made it more or less equivilent to being an electric only vehicle if necessary, but electronics allowed the engine to start as soon as possible because the design did not use an "endless" source of DC power from a large battery bank similar to what would be found on electric only vehicles.

To me, that system looked to be as good as anything, and it would have been a real benefit to have that 120V AC built in !

Back to Golf Carts, most use a simple belt driven "Starter/Generator" similar to what was found on older Lawn tractors. You can do an Ebay search on the two words together and see plenty of them. Garden Tractor ones usually only put out 15 amps tops, while I think the Golf Cart ones do around 30 amps.

These things make nifty DC charging systems in Motorhomes, as you can cobble together some electronics that will make a motor "autoStart" when the batteries are low, and shut down after charge float time or pure timer functions. Very nice if you have an RV or Tool Truck set up with 12v to Inverters rather than relying on AC generation all the time.

Grummy

I've heard of standby generators that had a flywheel starter. The flywheel was kept spinning by a mains powered motor. When the power failed,a clutch engaged the flywheel to the genset and it was up and generating power in seconds. I suspect that there may have been a few crankshaft failures as it would be a pretty heavy shock load on start up.

GM announced plans for a similar action in their full size p/u. The engine shuts off automatically when idling i.e. at stop lights. Claims to have significant fuel savings.

"habbi" skrev i en meddelelse news:c75pe.43153$ snipped-for-privacy@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...

Volkswagen used this in their Lupo 3L with a small turbodiesel engine.. In economy mode it would stop the engine at red lights... They got it to run about 33 km / litre on diesel.. I think this was the record at the time..

/peter

Not much of a shock load, the clutch slips to reduce the shock load. The mass of the flywheel is so sigificant that the voltage never did a noticable dip when AC mains was lost.

Saw one of these in an old hospital years ago. It looked like it may have been a steam driven gen set at one time. The flywheel was huge and was the generator. It had an electric motor on one side to drive it during normal use and a diesel on the other side with a mechanical clutch that was controlled by loss of incoming power.

As I understood it the flywheel only powered part of the OR (1 or 2 rooms) where they did open heart surgery. The flywheel stored enough energy to let them finish a open heart procedure using a heart lung pump. The time frame would have been early 1950's at a major univerisity medical center..

It was still in use in the middle 60's. I am sure it was from the late

1800's to early 1900's. I suspect they just torched off the steam cylinders and removed the connecting rod to make the conversion.

Hugh

Well how does it work in a golf cart anyway? Does thge brake ground out the ignition and the accelerator activate a relay to power the generator/starter or something?

The ones I've seen use a regular brake pedal for stopping (with a lock bar on it for a parking brake). The gas pedal has a microswitch on it to start cranking the starter/generator in the direction the "forward-neutral-reverse" switch is in. As I understand it, the engine timing is set for 0 degrees (TDC) so the engine will run either direction. Ken.

I understand that Detriot will be moving to 42 volt electrical systems soon. They will build the starter/generator into the flywheel. It would be a short hop in technology then to turn the engine on and off with the throttle. At 42 volts the current will be lower and with no moving parts, reliability should be high.

Pete Stanaitis

And you can arc weld with jumper cables (:

I've arc welded on a 12 volt system --- *inadvertantly*

Hope the OEMs print a caution label near the battery on the 2007 cars.