Anybody out there remember the little generators that mounted on bycycles and powered a light? I am working on a travel trailer and am wondering if something similar could be used to charge a battery while in motion....I am trying to avoid the weight of a gas generator.

I heard solar panels work good. I'm not sure if those little generators were 12 volt.

The only time your trailer would be in motion is if someone is pulling it with a vehicle. Why wouldn't you want to use a power cord from the vehicle's 12v system to recharge your trailer battery?

That is the easiest way to go and it would save you the cost of a little generator. This is the cheapest way out.

You could purchase solar panels and or a windmill. While a little more expensive, it will keep your battery charged up.

While a bicycle tire can get some pretty good speeds, I would suspect that the faster speeds of a motorized vehicle would burn that little generator out... Sorry, not a very good idea in my book.

My 5th Wheel's electrical lighting circuit ties into the 12v electrical circuit of my tow vehicle (connects directly to the camper battery). I am certain that some voltage trickles back the camper battery when towing, thus charging it. The circuit is switched so that the camper will not drain the tow vehicles battery when parked. Switched meaning that the circuit is fed from the "on" or "acc" side of the ignition switch.

This circuit is a heaver than normal (#8) electrical feed, with a 30 amp fuse mounted under the hood. This not to be confused with the electric brake circuit which is also a #8 wire pulled from a constant hot circuit using a 30 amp circuit breaker rather than fuse. The brake circuit is routed through the brake controller prior to the camper connector.

I would steer away from using anything that requires contact with the tire on the camper. Flats back there are difficult to detect. Plus, that little generator really has very limited output and would not last to long at highway speeds.

Have you considered a Solar Cell?

Look at the timing of the replies to that Post, we jumped on that like a Hobo on a Ham biscuit

Also, when parked a Battery Tender or Schumacher battery maintainer can be permanently mounted to your battery tray. They are great at keeping the battery topped up.

"...little generators that mounted on bicycles and powered a light?"
Oh, Yeah!! I mounted one on my new "Knee-Action" Schwinn: the faster one moved, the brighter the light - ensuring you were ALWAYS behind the seeing distance relative to speed. And, of course, when one halted, the light dimmed and went out. The knee-action was a wonderful frame/rider protector; the unprotected wheel, of course, jolted the generator out of position whenever it bumped. Other, more expensive generators contained batteries which helped somewhat, if one could afford batteries.
The good ol' days!!

quote:

Originally posted by Gunner:
"...little generators that mounted on bicycles and powered a light?"
Oh, Yeah!! I mounted one on my new "Knee-Action" Schwinn:The knee-action was a wonderful frame/rider protector; the unprotected wheel, of course, jolted the generator out of position whenever it bumped.

Yeah! I loved my Schwinn Black Phantom, too. It was the closest thing to a motorcycle I could manage. As soon as I was old enough, I put a Whizzer kit on it. Vroooom.

The generator was a little more secure if mounted on the rear. If you punched a dimple in the bike for the setscrew and sharpened the setscrew to a point, it would hold things in place pretty well, as well as provide a really good ground.

I had to look up knee action schwinn. The first google hit was for one Black Phantom sold at auction (artfact.com) for $600.00. I could buy A LOT of generators for that....
Thanks for all the replies...Hobo on a ham biscuit...I needed a good laugh.

quote:

Originally posted by bill h:
The generator was a little more secure if mounted on the rear.

Another reason to mount it in back was to protect it from the inevitable damage from the metal bike racks at school.

Plus, the added weight of the generator upset the finely engineered balance of unsprung weight to spring dynamics that the engineers in Chicago had calculated. The natural harmonics of the spring combined with the mass of the unsprung weight up front to provide that pillow-like Schwinn Black Phantom ride. The added weight upset the balance and secondary harmonics could be generated at certain frequencies induced by such things as riding between the rails on a railroad bridge. Without the limestone ballast of the normal track way to break things up, the spacing of the ties on the bridge made the bike very fussy about the speed and the natural harmonics of the bridge. That is why the local shop would not install a Delta generator on the front unless you also opted for a speedometer. As long as you kept your speed under or over 8 mph, all was well. But right at 8 mph, the harmonics would get so far out of hand that the bike would literally start the bridge vibrating, causing serious risk of structural damage. There was no record of a kid actually being able to hold on long enough for the bridge to collapse, though.

I know this sounds a little far-fetched, but you have all heard of a cat walking across a suspension bridge in such a manner as to cause a bridge to set up sympathetic vibrations and destroy itself. The same consideration is taken into account when Army troops are instructed to break cadence and march in what is called "Route Step" when crossing a bridge. http://www.military-net.com/education/mpddrill.html

Anyway, we had two railroads that ran through our town, and they were both aware of the damage a front-mounted generator Schwinn could do to their bridges. The Illinois Central provided free reinstallation of front-mounted generators to the rear, while the Rock Island Line installed speedometers on our bikes gratis.

The later Black Phantoms had a redesigned fork pivot, in which each curved fork leg had the pivot hole drilled right through it instead of the previously-used cast lug with the hole behind the leg. This moved the pivot axis of the axle rearward enough to affect both caster and trail enough that more stability eliminated the sensitivity to unsprung weight, and the straight nickel-plated cantilever tubes were also reduced from 3/8" to 5/16" diameter, which reduced the unsprung weight a little. The recommended steering head grease was changed to a lithium soap-based product that also included pig hair as a fiber to add a bit of torsional resistance to add stability, not unlike a friction steering damper on a British motorcyle. At the same time, the key lock was eliminated for reasons never fully explained. As a result, the problem faded into the mists of history.

There was a retrofit to the early models that involved adding a secondary spring inside the big chrome one. It was spiral wound out of flat stock, and also provided some friction dampening in addition to introducing a different spring rate and resonant frequency. The retrofit was not popular, as it was very difficult to install inside the beehive-shaped main spring. At any rate, it was poorly heat treated, and the hydrogen embrittlement almost always caused it to break into little pieces within a few months, and fell out, so all traces have been lost.

But ask and old Schwinn collector. He knows.

My 18 year old daughter bought a mid-fifties 'ladies" Schwinn on ebay bout a month back. Loves it, is hunting for basket for the back. Does that make her an old schwinn collector?

Does that make her an old schwinn collector?

Yeah, here in Texas it does; however, in the real world she is a "collector of old Schwinns".

Ah yes, 'ol Bill's been nippin' at the grape juice again. But Schwinn wasn't the only manufacturer to go for springs, though Schwinn looked the coolest.

There were Monark & J.,C. Higgins bikes with sprung front ends, and even a bike called "Twinflex cushioned," that was sprung front & rear. None of them were as neat looking as the Schwinns, though the Twinflex was close. There were also several bikes that fooled the unwary by wrapping spiral springs around the struts that braced the front forks. They looked neat, but that was all they did.

Now I wasn't there so I can't vouch for the truth of this, but I've been told that those Twinflex bikes would shake railroad bridges down at any speed. Didn't matter where you mounted the generator. So every American railroad had a corps of railroad detectives whose sole function was to keep Twinflexes off every railroad bridge everywhere. That prohibition resulted in the ultimate demise of the company, & that's why you never see a Twinflex bike outside of a museum.

Of course, all these treasures were just dreams for me. My only bike was a 1920s era skinny-tired job. When the tires wore out during WW II, I had the wheels rebuilt to wartime specifications, i.e. spokes painted black, not chromed, with even skinnier tires made of reclaimed rubber. I ditched the fenders, painted the whole thing black, & installed black-painted wide handlebars. I had the lightest, meanest, fastest, ugliest bike in the neighborhood, & rode rings around the rich kids on their fancy Schwinn trucks.

OK I should probably cut back on the corona before I post, but the wife unit is at a company function, eating buffalo(!), and I deserve...whatever.
Maybe I should start a new post? Let's say you walked into a mid-eighties 28 foot barth, and the odometer reads 16,243 miles...What is the first, and then the second thing you would look for to try to confirm actual mileage?

I would worry more that the mileage is accurate, rather than there were many more miles on it. A coach with <1,000 miles a year has not been driven enough to be kept in shape. IMHO, many more things go wrong in what we in the Oil Bidness called "Aunt Minnies" than in vehicles with 8-10K miles/year. Frankly, I'd prefer a coach with 116K miles.

In addition, coaches used that little mean the owner/s are likely unaware of a multitude of things that do need fixing....and used it infrequently because there was minor interest in it.