On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:16:53 -0600, wrote:

I live near an Amish community. They are required to use lights on
their horse drawn buggies at night. They use 12V marine batteries
which last about 7 to 10 hours. Then they have the non-Amish
neighbors charge them, or use a gas generator. I was talking to one
of them and he said he would like to connect a car alternator to the
wheels. I told him that seems doable. That got me thinking. Wiring
a delco with built in regulator is easy. There are two problems.

1. Mounting it so a pulley can be connected to the wooden spoke wheel
hub. I can sort of see a means to attach a belt pulley, but the belt
would have to connect to a shaft or it would be outside too far.

2. Alternators will not charge until they reach a specific RPM. I
doubt the buggy wheels would reach that. This means a gear assembly
would be needed to increase the rpm. I also heard that some tractor
alternators charge at a lower RPM, so I have to check into that.

Anyone have any suggestions? What could I steal a simple gear unit
from? How do I attach a pulley to a wooden hub, spoke wheel? Has
anyone ever done anything like this?

I'm having fun with this project....

Alvin

One page PDF file for Amish Buggy LED lights - lumileds.com.

http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/AmishBuggy0903F.PDF