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After what seems like many months of work I have now completed my 356/912 alternator conversion shown here on my 63 sc engine. I decided I wanted to go 12v with my 356 restoration and thought it would be good to use a vw 12v alternator with a built in regulator. These items are available brand new of the shelf at a reasonable cost and far better than a dynamo. Also the small diameter dynamos are getting hard to come by. My first intention was to machine an existing 356 generator stand or maybe even use a vw stand and modify it to work with the porsche engine. After studying both items I came to the conclusion this would not be possible but I had already bought the new alternator so I thought I had to do something. In the end I decided to make a sand casting pattern and have one cast in aluminum. I have made 1 or 2 sand casting patterns before but never a split pattern with a separate core. I tried to keep the pattern as simple as possible so that it would only have one split. The picture below shows from left to right. The pattern, the core and the core box. The core is the hollow part of the final casting
The split pattern of the outside shape
After the casting comes back from the foundry it requires machining
The next problem was the extra length of the alternator compared with the original dynamo. This meant in order to get the fan belt pulley to line up with the crank pulley it was necessary to sink the alternator further back into the fan shroud. This required a custom made fan backing plate which you can see in the picture showing the components in the kit
This next picture shows the custom made fan hub (left) next to the original (right). This is needed so the fan can be located closer to the back of the alternator and in the correct position in the fan shroud
This whole project was a lot of time, effort and expense for a one off so I decided to make 10 extra kits to sell on. The kit shown above contains all the parts needed for the conversion including a brand new alternator. I'm selling it at £350 so if you are interested let me know. I will also be selling them on ebay in the coming weeks. It may take several months to sell all 10 but I think when they are gone that will probably be it as each kit takes a lot of hours to produce. The kit is designed for the later 356/912 engine with the large oil breather can although I have made an adaptor so it can be used with the early 356 flip top oil filler shown in the picture below.
This is a solution but I don't think it looks as factory as the later style oil breather can. It also requires a lot of machining to make and I will have to sell at an extra £25. I would suggest locating a later style oil breather can and using that on the early engine
Well there it is. I do know that I'm not the first person to do this and there is a kit available in the US but as far as I know there is no UK supplier. I would be interested to here your thoughts on it as it is difficult for me to judge the demand for this product. All I know is I wanted one enough to put all this effort in so fingers crossed 10 other people do too
cheers jason
- my engine is going in my 64 ghia:( I think they should have come from the factory like this!!)