Heckler
Well-Known Member
A while back I told the story of the Aldi genny for £65, I was regaled with stories about "dirty" power and doom and gloom with expensive on board chargers.
Anyway, Vyv Cox kindly met up and sold me, at a reasonable price, an un regulated Bosch 2 stroke genny. I tried it out and it would run power tools etc, I then read up about my on board charger, a Dolphin, and what it said in the quaint franglais on its web site was that it was an auto adjust to input voltage, machine. I pluicke dup courage and plugged the genny in to the boat system, the charger worked after a fashion, BUT it started getting warm, when I checked the voltage from the genny under load it had dropped to 170ish and was wobbly up and down.
I suspect the poor charger was frantically switching something to compensate for "dirty" voltage.
So back to the drawing board, more net research, ebay etc, SDM0 started popping up, made in france etc only £265, 4 stroke 900 watts with 750 continous. Most important, an invertor type genny. So i bought it, lubbly jubbly, charges thru the charger great, runs the telly and a nice 60 watt mains bulb to give a lovely glow in the evening.
AND most important it will run the 720 watt toaster, swmbo thinks its wonderful. So a result, frugal, quiet, 4 stroke clean power and swmbo happy.
A big thanks to Vyv for helping out.
Stu
Anyway, Vyv Cox kindly met up and sold me, at a reasonable price, an un regulated Bosch 2 stroke genny. I tried it out and it would run power tools etc, I then read up about my on board charger, a Dolphin, and what it said in the quaint franglais on its web site was that it was an auto adjust to input voltage, machine. I pluicke dup courage and plugged the genny in to the boat system, the charger worked after a fashion, BUT it started getting warm, when I checked the voltage from the genny under load it had dropped to 170ish and was wobbly up and down.
I suspect the poor charger was frantically switching something to compensate for "dirty" voltage.
So back to the drawing board, more net research, ebay etc, SDM0 started popping up, made in france etc only £265, 4 stroke 900 watts with 750 continous. Most important, an invertor type genny. So i bought it, lubbly jubbly, charges thru the charger great, runs the telly and a nice 60 watt mains bulb to give a lovely glow in the evening.
AND most important it will run the 720 watt toaster, swmbo thinks its wonderful. So a result, frugal, quiet, 4 stroke clean power and swmbo happy.
A big thanks to Vyv for helping out.
Stu
