Homemade 12 Volt Generator

 I suppose if I was being absolutely honest with my title I would have called this post,"Homemade 12 Volt Generator-Fail! That's not completely true either as the device does charge a twelve volt battery. It is just to noisy and to expensive to run. It takes it almost a hour to recharge a battery that has been run down to 10.5 or so volts. It will burn almost a gallon of gas in that time which makes for real expensive electricity. I used what I had as usual and it this case it was a 8.5 horse engine. It was on a snow blower I had which had a broken gear case. At any rate, I no longer needed a snow blower, especially one that didn't work, and it was a easy conversion. I removed the blower part and bolted a steel plate on in it's place. On to the steel plate I mounted a automotive alternator with a adjustable bracket . I found a wiring diagram on the internet for the alternator I have and hooked it up. I did have to buy a vee belt.I use a set of jumper cables to hook it to my battery. Since I left the tires on the snow blower it is easy to move it around. There is a lot of vibration for some reason which has caused several problems. The electric starter, which hung out from the side vibrated enough to break the weld that held it on. No problem, it can be started with the pull start. Then the muffler weld let go too. That was harder to fix and I have not found a muffler that will make it quite enough to run close to the cabin without having to wear ear plugs. With gas at $3.82 it will not be running much! We added some more solar panels this year and plan to add a small wind turbine soon. I may try rebuilding this outfit if I come across a smaller engine.