dmr
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Posts posted by dmr
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1 minute ago, ditchcrawler said:
I thought construction couldn't use it now
Sorry, I meant that before the change they were likely not buying from the local garage anyway.
The new regulations for farms are complicated as red should only be used for actual farming, not for the various farm related construction tasks.
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11 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
They must have a very limited market now it can't legally be used in plant
I expect than most construction sites (and bigger farms) get their diesel delivered to their site so the customers at most garages will be smaller farms and smallholdings etc. so the market might not have reduced too much.
44 minutes ago, christiaan said:I have heard that if you have separate tanks then it's less of a problem. I am thinking of having a separate smaller tank fitted for propulsion and keeping the larger tank just for heating. Then normal diesel in one and fully rebated red in The other. Just a thought!
I would speak to ytour marina first before you go to the expense of aseparate tank, they might be totally stuck on 60:40 regardless.
Also do work out how much that extra tank will cost to install and what the savings are likely to be over the next few years. I suspect it will be cheaper to stick to the 60:40.
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1 hour ago, christiaan said:
I really only ever intended it as a home as I couldn't afford to buy a house. I can't find anywhere in the legislation that states a supplier of rebated fuel can decide for you what your usage is. All I can find is that you make your declaration based on actual usage and the supplier adjusts the duty in accordance. I used to live in a rural areas a r used heating oil which is 0 duty whereas red diesel is 11.14p duty included and should be no more if used for heating only. I can't understand why any supplier would want to charge customers any more than they legally have to!
Uk, Cambridgeshire
Some diesel sellers just find it easier to stick to 60:40 as it makes their calculations and paperwork marginally easier. It just might be a political view from the marina owner who could believe that boaters are lowlife who should pay their "fair share" of taxes. I have only encountered this attitude once and that was at a marina in Cambridgeshire (where I chose not to buy their diesel). Maybe this is where you are.
Ideally you should keep the tank topped up so just putting in a couple of jerry cans every week should be enough, though this is a bit tedious and hard work if you have to carry them any distance. Finding a petrol station that will sell you red diesel can also be a bit tricky, some are even more difficult than your marina. 😀. If you do go the jerrycan route then I find a syphon much more civilised than trying to pour into a funnel. It takes several minutes to syphon a 20litre can which is just the right time to do a bit od deck sweeping or whatever.
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38 minutes ago, MtB said:
Yep, agree with all of that. The OP is going to have to go to considerable trouble to avoid paying the 60/40 split whichever alternative approach to getting fuel s/he decides use.
I'd suggest just sucking it up and paying the split.
One of the big attractions of living on a boat is the sense of freedom, and a static boat in a marina rather negates this, you are stuck with whatever rules and regulations the marina chooses to apply. However they must know that the boat is static so asking for propulsion duty is rather unfair.
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Yesterday I watched CRT (full time staff) assisting boats over the Rochdale summit, no ropes, just careful use of the paddles.
All this arguing over same side/opposite side paddles is rather meaningless as it varies from canal to canal, and boat length is a major factor.
On the Rochdale its opposite side paddle us, but when I help shorter boats its much less clear cut.
If you don't know the lock and have additional crew a good safe option is to open both paddles together about a 1/3, so that any forces tend to cancel out.
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8 minutes ago, MtB said:
Another option might be to order some red diesel/gas oil from one of the domestic fuel suppliers who will deliver it in a tanker.
E.g. https://www.boilerjuice.com/uk
Minimum delivery size happens to be 500 litres, conveniently.
Currently about £1 a litre plus 5% VAT for my area. Yours might be different.
yes but, The tanker hose will not fit the boat filler, it will be huge and deliver fuel at a massive rate.. You will also have to fill in the suppliers declaration stating why you can use red diesel and they might or might not be happy about selling to a boat . Also the marina will likely object to a tanker enterring their property to compete with them.
As the op only fills the tank once every blue moon then HVO would be a better/safer option but thats even more difficult.
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For a different perspective, we try to use ropes only as a last resort in known difficult locks. Ropes are a distraction and something else to go wrong. One person on the boat using engine to hold the boat in position, one working the paddles and using them to try to control the boat. Going down is easy, just need to keep forward of the cill and watch for other hangups. Going up needs careful and gentle use of appropriate paddles to avoid moving the boat too much, only fully open paddles once boat is at least half way up.
The trouble with ropes.....
Going down the boat can get hung on the rope, so rope needs constant monitoring and adjusting, so distracting you from other tasks.
Going up....in a deep lock rope has limited effect due to poor angle, rope must be very tight to work so needs constant adjusting when attention should be on boat and paddles.
Ropes ok if you have additional crew dedicated to rope handling.
Single handing is obviously very different.
To be fair though, we are a heavy full length boat so the technique of a centre line looped round a bollard back to the steerer does not work well for us, for others it does.
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28 minutes ago, IanD said:The problem is that the two things which would fix these problems -- restoration of the central grant (in real terms) to at least what it was when CART was formed, and a significant and rapid increase in license fees with more graduation (bigger and faster than CART have proposed, with a bigger surcharge for wideboats and CCers to discourage CMers) -- are being blocked, the first by the government and the second by the boaters who would be worse off as a result, including the NBTA... 😞
Putting a big surcharge on CC'ers in order to deter CM'ers is a really bad and unfair way to solve the CM'er/cheap housing problem. CC'ers, often older retired people with a real interest in the canals, are an essential part of the canal community.
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10 hours ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
That’ll be it then 👍
no, my switch is down the front end of the boat behind the lamp,
A switch! I thought you had to find the right two wires and twist them together 😀
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1 hour ago, Bacchus said:
Get on a little boat, tootle along the canal, and see what others have done...
Or even easier (but less fun) just walk some of the towpath and have a look at other gardens to get some good ideas. There are a huge range of canalside gardens, its fascinating, everything from med style patios to total jungles, and a few bars complete with handpumps.
From my perspective as a boater something that is generally in keeping with the local character of the canal is good, but a little ecentricity never hurts.
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Cheaper batteries often don't last very long on a boat, so If you intend to keep for a few years then I think we have got to the point were Lithium are now actually cheaper, but you do have to find the money up front.
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A lot of stuff that "needs" a 12 volt supply will work ok at 9 volts, as it probably gets dropped down to 5v internally, but you would need to experiment to confirm this. With various volt drops the supply at your device could be as low as maybe 11.9 volts so a linear regulator will never give you 12 volts, not even a low dropout device.
Buck-boost is the only way to go and as they are switching they are more efficient. If you want fun then buy the chip and make your own circuit, this will likely involve winding a little inductor and that is fun, but a ready made jobbie from eBay will be cheaper.
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39 minutes ago, manxmike said:
Ha! Almost certainly it had completely run out of oil, or the oil was so full of gunge it wouldn't leak even if the sump was cracked, you have to love the old A series - almost as awful as the K series (why build an engine that the bolts holding on the head also hold on the sump?)
A clean, painted engine, not only looks good, it's easier to work on without getting covered in centuries old oil and grime
Modern engines are horrible, they sound horrid and have no character. The A series was a lovely engine with a very pleasing tickover, especially with a little bit of wear in the timing chain. The B series was even nicer.
BL were very proud of those long bolts holding the K series together, they were actually a very innovative company even though things often went a bit wrong.
We did briefly own a modernish metro as a stop gap while all the other cars were awaiting me to find time to fix them. I wanted to hate it but that K series was a lovely eager free revving engine.. My daughter learned to drive in it and still misses it. Sadly the release bearing went so it was added to the list of broken cars that I never quite got round to fixing.
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If this is an integral tank then at some stage you will need to get in there and repaint it. At this time you will find that plastic cap and maybe a couple of other things, hosepipe fittings and the like. This is normal and don't worry about it. Frogs and fish etc are slightly more concerning.
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5 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
Talking of golden, I’ve discovered a new (to us) bar!
Its very good, I won’t tell you where but instead will keep you in suspense til we meet again.
Do they sell BMC recons? or maybe Golden Glow?
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14 minutes ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:
I understand/believe BMC’s were painted depending on what degree of reconditioning they’d had.
Gold or Silver.
https://mgaguru.com/mgtech/engine/be100a.htm
mine’s gold 😃
Yes, I remeber all those dodgy adverts for gold and silver recon BMC's. I wonder if they did a bronze version too....no recon at all, straight from the scrapyard with a quick coat paint 😀.
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4 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
Picking up on this and having answered my previous question about why the field current % has to be so high for the tacho to work at low rpm:
I was for some reason thinking an alternator was effectively a current source. But at the heart is Faraday’s Law which describes emf being a function of magnetic field and (effectively) rpm. So the alternator is fundamentally an emf generator, not a current generator.
So in order to get a decent phase signal of say 10v pk-pk one might need quite a lot of field current at low rpm. But no current flows because the diodes don’t go into conduction, until the phase voltage gets to battery voltage + diode drops. For a given low rpm, if you ramp up the field, no current flows as the emf ramps up towards (say) 14v. Then just a slight increase in field current is needed to push the voltage beyond the battery voltage + diode drops, and suddenly the alternator is outputting current. So there should be a fairly wide margin of field current at low rpm to keep a modest voltage - but a voltage below diode conduction - on the phase output. The problem arises due to the rpm term in faraday’s equation, such that a wide range of field current is needed to maintain the “phase output live but diodes not conducting”, over a wide range of rpm.
I agree. So if Zeus is reading the phase/tacho/W signal via an ADC then it could all be done very neatly, but if Zeus is reading the squared up signal as a digital input it can't be done quite as well or safely.
If Zeus is in float or shut down then the Tacho signal signal is really not important (unless its sharing it on the CANbus), as far as I can see its only real purpose is to support the speed dependant duty cycle limit.
As an aside the speed dependant duty cycle limit does not really work for me, there are not enough speed points, so I can't limit it at tickover without also reducing it at lower running speeds.
The new Victron DC-DC converters look dead good so an option for lithium would be to connect the domestic alternator to the starter battery and charge the lithiums via the DC-DC. Two converters cost less than a Zeus 😀. I really need the duty cycle and temperature limits so the Zeus is the best option for me.
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3 minutes ago, cheesegas said:
Unfortunately it's not as simple as that - if there is field drive, there is always output current. You can't have the field on and no current flowing in the stator. This is the problem; to maintain float voltage, almost zero current must flow out the alternator (well ok, maybe 100ma...) which means the field must be sufficiently low for this to happen. This level of field current is not enough for the tacho to work.
Your logic system would work fine when in bulk or absorption, but in float with no loads switched on in the boat there's the situation of the field being very low and the output current of the alternator being next to zero; the tolerance of a shunt is probably less than the current needed to maintain a lithium battery in float.
Lithium systems are even more difficult as there's a situation which could last 10 minutes or so when the regulator drops the voltage from say 14.2v to 13.4v; the battery must actually discharge a little in order for the regulator to achieve target voltage. For this to happen, the field must be zero and the output current and thus tacho will be zero also. This looks the same to the regulator as the engine being switched off.
A crude alternative would be to force the alternator to always output current by switching in a ballast resistor when in float, but that's wasting energy...
Another, better, workaround for the tacho issue is on dual alternator installations, to connect the regulator's tacho wire to the starter alternator so it always gets signal. I'm frankly surprised this isn't recommended in the manual.
I agree that documentation is not very good and they seem to rely heavily on the brief blurbs in the app rather than having a detailed manual. There's no explanation of how various settings interact, for example the minimum field. Some descriptions are bad too - the voltage at which the regulator drops the field under a high voltage fault condition is called Maximum Voltage. This sounds like the maximum allowable charge voltage under normal conditions, and the blurb in the dialog box doesn't do much to explain. High Voltage Cutout would be more descriptive.
Maybe I didn't explain my thinking too well?? If we want a simulation of a traditional warning light which can detect belt (or brush) failures then this should only come on if Zeus is providing significant field drive and not detecting corresponding output current. The light should not come on if there is no charge, and probably not during float. Something more complicated like Nick describes might be better, but I would really just like to just see a light come on and go off when I start the engine so a simpler system should work.
Assuming most Zeus systems are controlling the domestic alternator comprehensive detection of belt failure is a bit less critical as its usually the starter belt that drives the water pump.
Taking the tacho signal from the starter alternator sounds like an exellent idea, but I don't think I can be bothered to redo the wiring but will if Arco make suitable changes to their software. I have disabled the "tacho required" option because as you say its really not that significant.
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5 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
It matters if you want have an alternator warning light that would eg come on when the belt snapped. If the field current can fall to zero / no phase signal when things are spinning, that is indistinguishable from a rotation stoppage. And so in order to avoid false warning when the former occurs, the system has to be designed so that neither case brings on the warning light.The Zeus does not suppport a traditional warning light, maybe this is part of the reason.
It should be relatively easy to sort this out in software, if there is no field drive then a tacho signal is not expected so the light should not/can not light, but when there is a field drive then the light should come on if there is no output current. This is where that alternator shunt really does become useful 😀.
I am starting to see that an alternator shunt is actually potentially quite useful. Alternator current does drop off quite a lot as the alternator warms up so if I want to limit current when the alternator first starts (to control belt slip) but still have a good current when the alternator is hot then working off alternator current rather than duty cycle might be a good idea......but Zeus does not do this.
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Here is part of a data log from Zeus.
This shows the current falling off as the alternator warms up. Ive got duty cycle set to 65 maximum and alternator temperature set at 65/75 which is probably a bit low. This all just about works but I would be happier limiting start up current to 70 amps but this would stop me getting 70 amps when the alternator is hot (or would if I increased the alternator temperature a bit)
blue: current
red: duty
green alternator temperature
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1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:
I think we are talking topsides, not hull, I don't think you would employ a boat painter to put black on . Maybe the OP can confirm.
Thats how I read it too. Im not sure that Jotun 90 is the best primer for topsides, but maybe it would be ok if it was sprayed on?
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9 minutes ago, cheesegas said:
True, on a modern installation with dual alternators it doesn’t matter except for when you have ‘wait for tacho’ enabled. That requires a minimum field current. I think it should also have a warning in the app…
There should either be an enable/disable option for minimum field with a warning when you enable it, or it defaults to zero and then when you enter in a number it pops up with the warning. There’s a half page dedicated to this very pitfall in the Wakespeed manual for example, and you’re also less likely to use minimum field on the Wakespeed as it doesn’t have a wait for tacho option.
My 35 year old Isuzu originally had a sender on the camshaft for the tacho, but newer engines don’t, pretty much all mechanically injected engines of the sort we see on inland craft have an alternator driven tacho. The Wakespeed can take engine RPM from CANBUS but I don’t know if the Zeus can.
I was going to try connecting the Zeus’s tacho input to my Isuzu’s sender, but it doesn’t allow for a tacho ratio below 1 - it needs to be 0.5 as the camshaft is half engine speed. I could knock together something to output a second pulse, but at that point you may as well install a sender on the crank pulley or something!
Unless I missed it there is almost zero documentation available for the Zeus, its operation and the the App, just the installation wiring diagrams. Maybe this will turn up soon???
Have just set my minimum duty to 0%. I want to get 100% confident in the Zeus before I think about replacing the Trojans with Lithium.
Also just reduced my maximum duty to 65% and still got over 80 amps out of the alternator (100amp Iskra) when I first started the engine. I would like to limit it to about 70 as its running off a single V belt, but if I do that I might not get enough current when the alternator is hot. I will post some graphs of logged data in the next day or so.
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A bit of lateral thinking......does this actually matter in most instalations?
On my engine the main tacho comes from the "starter" alternator. The Zeus controls the domestic alternator and if that goes into float the only consequence is that Zeus cannot display rpm, but as its not really doing anything that does not matter?
The issue is that 0% minimum duty should be the default, and should only be changed in special circumstances?
The entire concept of driving the tacho off the alternator is a bit historic, and on modern systems that run something like the Zeus the tacho should ideally come from a cam or crank sensor (though this is still rare).
To answer your post, a lot depends on how Zeus handles the tacho signal, it might be possible to do a firmware upgrade but if the tacho signal goes via a comparator or directly to a digital input then its a hardware change that would be required.
If you get the scope out again then report back on typical voltages at low field drives???
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30 minutes ago, cheesegas said:
The problem is just that. The Zeus can apply a minimum field current, no matter the RPM. If you set it to something like 5%, there isn't enough magnetism in the rotor to induce a large enough current in the stator for a meaningful signal to be present on the W terminal, so the tacho reads zero. In my setup, 24% was just enough at idle to get a tacho signal; 23% meant it jumped between zero and 700rpm. This is the threshold of the tiny bit of excitation you mentioned.
However, at higher RPMs when the rotor is moving faster past the stator, that same 24% field drive induces a greater current in the stator than at idle. It's not only enough to drive the tacho but it's also enough to push the output of the alternator above the target voltage when the load is low.
A user configurable map of minimum field % against RPM would solve this, so it's dynamic and reduces the minimum field as RPMs increase.
ok, I have no first hand experience of this. I wonder how many volts Zeus needs to deduce speed?. A user configurable limit would be a bit of a pain, I would think that an automatic system could be deduced, something like Nick desribes for his alternator control chip.
The "tacho required" is a bit usefull in that it alows the start delay and soft ramp to work correctly even if the engine is a bit slow to start for some reason, but in almost all cases this should not really be required.
I have been using Zeus to control Alternator temperature. It looks like there is some learning going on and it has got very good at holding a steady temperature (within 1 degree) with only small modulations in duty cycle......BUT, I have to specify a target temperature and a maximum temperature (65 and 75 in my case) and Zeus aims for something mid way between these (69/70) while I think it should aim for the lower temperature. A problem with this is it constantly gives a "temperature high" status message.
More seriously, despite setting a temperature limit and duty cycle limit, I believe I saw Zeus apply 100% field for maybe a minute or too causing a high alternature temperature. It could potentially have given a high voltage if it had been past the bulk phase. Sadly I did not manage to record this. I suspect this happened because I had gone back into the saloon with my phone which was right on the edge of the Bluetooth range and Zeus somehow got sidetracked into trying to reconnect, but this is only a guess.
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24 minutes ago, nicknorman said:
Thanks for that detailed description. It does seem very crap for something that cost £800+. You say “This overall problem is not unique to the Zeus, it's something we have to deal with in all external regulators which are capable of reducing the alternator voltage to float.” but I say that it doesn’t have to be like that. I know that you and DMR probably don’t want to hear this, but the regulator I built around an £8 chip deals with keeping the phase /tacho output “alive” with zero load on the alternator, flawlessly. From the data sheet:
Its good, I like to hear stuff like this, maybe I should have talked to you and used your design, but its a lot of time and effort that I don't have, but I am a huge believer in the concept of a "one man band" competing with the big (biggish) companies.
I don't really see what the big issue is with float mode and tacho signal, maybe I have not thought hard enough 😀, surely it only needs a volt (or even much less) to deduce speed, so as long as a tiny bit of rotor excitation is applied (well below float voltage) there should be enough voltage. Its a zero crossing thing? Is the residual magnetism not enought?
If you wanted to be really pedantic you could apply just enough rotor drive to get a tacho signal but not turn on the rectifier diodes 😀
Paying for red diesel
in General Boating
Posted
HVO and FAME are two totally different fuels. They might be made from the same feedstock but the process of manufacture is different. FAME is pretty rubbish stuff but the government insists on diluting our diesel with it. HVO is good stuff and even better than "dinodiesel". HVO is not hygroscopic and is also long term stable.