Deleted.
Post is of little use without the accompanied spreadsheet.
I suspect that a purely resistive load may not give realistic results of the operation of a vibrating regulator (a capacitive part of the load may be what helps smoothing the effect of the vibrator regulation, but the inductive nature of some other elements part of the actual circuit may also play a role)
Craven,
That’s a great bit of work.
In an ideal world, the output of the stabilser should be independent of the load. Your experiment shows that isn’t quite the case.
I guess this isn’t surprising. In the real world, everything effects everything. It isn’t clear to me why the load should have an effect, but it is possible that the bimetallic strip has a material resistance itself. If that were the case, then the heating of the bimetallic strip wouldn’t just depend on the heating coil, but would also come from the current flowing through the bimetallic strip itself, which in turn would depend on the load
One outcome of this is that the reading on the temperature gauge would (in part) depend how much fuel was in the tank. Given that the gauges and sensors are not precision instruments, I guess a bit of hit and miss was OK.
Andy.
Was testing a similar voltage regulator while chasing problems with the fuel gauge on my Falcon Ranchero yesterday. Using a test light, it was interesting to watch the light pulse as the heat strip did its job. Doing everything I can to avoid dropping the fuel tank. No such luck.