2001 venture 500 power, dc or ac

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das fisch

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I have a 2001 venture 500 and want to hook up a power supply for my garmin gps. is this sled running off ac or dc power? it has a hook up for a heated shield, which I don't have/use, and this would be convenient spot to tap into for a 12v source to plug gps into if it's dc.
any thoughts? it has battery and electric start too
 
Ac= alternating current commonly found in your homes, garage 110/220. Dc = direct current commonly found in auto,marine,snowmobile applications. All depends on where your heat sheald plug is fed from. If it was installed correctly yes thats a perfect spot. If some yahoo wired that in from your grip heater circuit then NO, Bad dont use. back track the wires to find out wherethey go. If your sled has a battery that the best place to wire to.
 
lowmilevmax said:
DC. all 12 volt systems are DC
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Incorrect, sleds use both AC and DC power systems, if your Venture has an electric start just pull the power directly from the battery itself and avoid any possible issues.

Jeremy
 
HndaTch627 said:
Incorrect, sleds use both AC and DC power systems, if your Venture has an electric start just pull the power directly from the battery itself and avoid any possible issues.

Jeremy
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What AC power system is used on the sled?
 
The magneto generates AC power which is then converted to DC. However, the DC is not a true DC wave. Just watch it on an oscilloscope to see what I mean. Newer sleds have condensers that clean up the power quite a bit. There was a post on here back in 2002 that showed the power wave of the 300W system in the Viper.

On the other hand, a battery acts as very good smoothing condenser so electric start sleds have very good clean DC power.

Like posted above, if you have a battery you are good. If you do not have a battery you may want to clean up your power. Do a search on this site, as we have posted about this in the past.
 
now other than actually catching power at the magneto what converts the power back to AC. I have read poeple say that there taillight is AC voltage. I do realize that the voltage will fluctuate but I measure it with a multimeter will it not test in DC mode?
 
HPE sells an adapter that plugs into the rca outlet for a shield, and the other end is a 12v plug to put your charger in. I assume if it has the rca plug, it worked for the last guy, but follow the wires to be sure. as far as "clean power" it will be fine as your gps uses it's own battery for power, and when it is plugged in, it is only charging the battery, I run a garmin nuvi on my SRX and it is wired into the red (regulated) wires near the headlight.
 
lowmilevmax said:
now other than actually catching power at the magneto what converts the power back to AC. I have read poeple say that there taillight is AC voltage. I do realize that the voltage will fluctuate but I measure it with a multimeter will it not test in DC mode?
Click to expand...
Grip heaters, thumb heater, taillight and headlight run off AC power. If you connected a DCV meter to the circuit it would read 0V, switch to ACV and you will register the proper 13.5V.

Trust me, when I was diagnosing my bad thumb heater I was scratching my head a bit until I realized that the power is drawn directly off the stator and there's no rectifier bridge in the circuit.

Jeremy
 
Shrader said:
Lights are not a/c power. Take a bulb out and wire it to an outlet in your house, and let me know what happens.
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Do I win a prize if I answer this one!? ...Your house is 120 volts ac, the bulb will blow. Hook it to the sleds ac system at 12 volts ac and it will light up. A light bulb doesn't care if it sees ac or dc as long as you have the correct voltage.
 
Shrader said:
Lights are not a/c power. Take a bulb out and wire it to an outlet in your house, and let me know what happens.
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sure they are, they just aren't going to function on 120V AC. Anything with a filament/resistor(i.e.: no polarity) will function the same on AC voltage as it will on DC voltage.

Jeremy
 
I am not saying any is wrong or right until I can see for my self as I have never worked on snowmobile electrical but I assumed it was all 12v. So here is my question. What is the voltage coming off the stator? if it is AC then how can you hook up a 12v DC battery without an AC to DC converter. If it is DC at the stator then how do you get AC to the grips, lights, etc without a DC to AC inverter? I just want to understand how you can have both DC and AC on such a simple set up. Jason
 
edunn69 said:
Do I win a prize if I answer this one!? ...Your house is 120 volts ac, the bulb will blow. Hook it to the sleds ac system at 12 volts ac and it will light up. A light bulb doesn't care if it sees ac or dc as long as you have the correct voltage.
Click to expand...

You are correct on this one. If you take an incandescent bulb from your house and hook it up to a 12v power supply it will light and polarity per filiment on these bulbs doesnt matter either.
 
It is 12v AC at the taillight. I had to see to believe. now to take care of my curiosity I have to test things on the sled to see how it all works. Good call everyone.
 
lowmilevmax said:
I am not saying any is wrong or right until I can see for my self as I have never worked on snowmobile electrical but I assumed it was all 12v. So here is my question. What is the voltage coming off the stator? if it is AC then how can you hook up a 12v DC battery without an AC to DC converter. If it is DC at the stator then how do you get AC to the grips, lights, etc without a DC to AC inverter? I just want to understand how you can have both DC and AC on such a simple set up. Jason
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All charging systems make AC voltage however in a car you'd never know that because the rectifier bridge inside the alternator changes it to DCV before it leaves the back of it. I assume part of the voltage regulators duty is to provide a DC power source for things like the CDI units and battery and this why they are made of alumnium with decent sized heat sinks(rectifiers heat up under load).

Jeremy

P.s.: you check a rectifier bridge by testing for ACV on the DCV circuit. When the rectifiers start to go they will bleed ACV into the circuit which is called "ripple". Hope this at least helps some people understand how things work a little bit.
 
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