electric motors for water pumps

[Bain]

im looking for a way to be rid of all the drive belts on my car and was wandering if i could use one of those electric motors they use on water pumps to run either my alternator or power steering? thanks for the help.

[ghostguy6]

Ummmmm...... Hell No!!!! Thats All Im Gonna Say! No Explanation! I Dont Think One Is Even Needed!!!!!!!!

[Reed]

did you just say you want to run an alternator on an electric motor.

anyhow, just take out your power steering, you dont need it

[SaabJohan]

Stop for a moment and think!

If you use an electric motor to run your alternator the motor will consume more power than the alternator, it will basicly do nothing more than consume battery power.

The power steering can infact consume quite some power, don't run it with an electric motor.

Don't see any reasons why you want to get rid of all your drive belts but if you really want this you can run your alternator and/or servo pump from for example of the back of the camshafts.
In racing engines it's very common that parts like this sits on common shafts on the side of the engine, for example you can modify the camshaft chain, belt or gear so it powers all of those parts, this is however nothing that is simple to do.

[Bain]

yeah i realized the alternator thing like the night after i posted that for some reason it just didnt hit me until then but i'll admit i feel pretty stupid having asked it. and im wanting to get rid of belts to free up hp. obviously fans and waterpumps are easy enough to do away with but i hadnt heard of any way to do the alternator or power steering and that was the first thing that came to mind. i just wish i had thought it through a little more and saved myself some dignity.

[pind]

you could go to underdrive pulleys for the alternator and p/s pump.

[Doug Rodrigues]

Hey Bain,
Think nothing of it. Have you ever heard of the term "Brain Storming?" You get so many ideas going through your head as possibilities that the obvious gets side-tracked temporarily. If nothing else, it shows that you have a good imagination and brain power. It's the guys (and girls) who think of nothing at all who have the real problems with "dignity."

Hey, what Pind mentioned about pulleys would give you a bit more HP. You can also install an undersized crankshaft pulley to do the same thing. Some people call that undersized crank pulley a "Power Pulley." Probably different names by different manufacturers. Fairly cheap too. It's a very common part sold in most autoparts stores.

[Bain]

cool, thanks for the tips.

[replicant_008]

Some race cars use 'total loss' systems ie don't run an alternator such as Formula Ford. We use an auxilary battery to start them on the grid and the battery simply discharges during a race (and we use lightweight gel batteries).

Electrical Power steering does make sense - a number of cars use this system but it is a bit of a mission to engineer. As for the suggestion about simply disconnecting the PS drive belt - that's not a particularly good idea especially if you are running a FWD car.

Most FWD cars WITHOUT power steering have compromises in their geometry and/or steering ratio to accomodate the fact that there is no assistance.

Cars designed to use FWD with power steering may adopt zero scrub or make changes to castor that with the steering ratio will make the steering bearable at speed but a complete nightmare in traffic or around town.

If you want to look at frictional losses there are plenty of gains to made. The obvious ones are the accessory drives especially air conditioning. Less obvious are things like rolling resistance of your tires (which can be influenced by such arcane things as the tires, alignment, tire pressure... narrower ones have less but the same width tire depending on the manufacturer or design can be quite different. Then again narrower tires have less lateral grip...), aerodynamic efficiency (including drag inducing wings!), loading on the alternator - eg the more electrical gear run including ICE the more drag the alternator produces making the power, the amount of weight in the car (eg toolkits, spare tires etc)... the other odd thing we found was the brakes - some brakes actually drag while they are off... we've tested this by taking calipers or pads off and rolling the car...

If this somes arcane - this was preparation for an endurance race where this all adds to fuel economy which ends up being a major factor if you can avoid a pitstop...

[replicant_008]

Oh and I forgot about the gains with a dry sump as well

[Bain]

replicant 008 thanks for the advice ive already done quite a bit of that. the a/c is long gone along with all of its components to drop weight and I've pulled all the crap out of the trunk and plan to rig my rear and passenger seats so that they can pop right out easily when im racing it. by the way the car is rwd its an 81 z28.

I'd like to convert the rear brakes to disc instead of worthless drums but the kits are pretty expensive is there an easy way to just get rotors and claipers and make my own brackets for the calipers?