The project was at a virtual standstill while I attempted to engineer the perfect bike stand for this application.

But a major breakthrough in the project came by way of my beautiful wife, Erin, on a rainy Saturday afternoon:

After a full day of searching for an exercise bike or bike trainer for me, she made a call to a thrift store in Eureka, 15 minutes before they closed. The woman didn’t think they had one in stock, but my wife convinced her to look. Surprised, the woman told my wife that they did, in fact, have one in the outside yard and it could be ours for the dirt-cheap price of 10 cents per pound. She raced to Eureka to pick it up, paying a mere $4.80.

It was a Peugeot Exercise Bike (fig. 1) in great condition. This purchase solved my bike stand problem and I was able to focus completely on connecting the electrical components.

The Revised Design

Along with the Major Breakthrough, also came a Revised Design.

Since no stand or bicycle would be needed, I would build a base for the generator and attach it to the front of the exercise bike. I would also use a tension spring to compensate for irregularities in the shape of the bicycle tire and/or the generator wheel. This would allow the generator to move back and forth with the differing shapes of the two wheels.

But unfortunately the DC generator gods were not smiling favorably upon me and my searches were therefore fruitless. After searching into the deep recesses of my brain, I thought of a (possibly) perfect solution sitting right in the garage: A 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40.

The FJ40 has a low RPM engine (approx. 650 RPM @ idle) and therefore a low RPM alternator (fig. 2), which charges the 12V battery (fig. 3), which I also "borrowed" from the FJ40 (fig. 4).

I know that the alternator is in working condition, but since it only functions when connected to a battery (per the Haynes Repair Manual), I would be unable to test it’s appropriateness for this application until the project construction was complete –

a strong sense of foreboding, a dark cloud if you will, at this point in the story…