Here's a few thoughts based on your posting and some of the comments so far.
These machines depending how you build them really need to furl such
that sustained output is not more than 600-900 Watts (at 24V, 600
Watts is about the limit if you used rectangular 1" x 2" magnets and
wound the stator with AWG 14 wire). By sustained output I mean
steady/constant output - on gusty sites I would still expect to see
peaks of twice that.
Presumably your dump load is tied directly to the battery and it
shouldn't be an issue. It might be an issue if your battery is very
very small and voltage was allowed to rise way too high... I doubt
that's the case though. In any even... an 8ohm dump load at 24 Volts
can only dump about 3 amps (75 Watts) so it is very much too small for
the job.
Stator bolts - It doesn't look like you have any lock washers on the
machine at all - I wonder if you've used locktight? One or the other,
there are pros and cons to both and lots of opinions, but with neither
used I would expect things to fall apart. I've made lots of these
machines and only twice had an issue with stator hardware coming loose
- once, was on a machine we built years ago and it had no lock washers
or locktight. The other time was on my own machine when it ran single
phase for a while and vibrated intensely - and some stator hardware
came a bit loose. I do think that on these smaller 10' turbines,
supporting the stator at 3 points is fine - that's based on quite a
few machines that have not had problems, some of which are quite older
and had much weaker stator brackets and the studs between the brackets
and the stator were about twice as long. Those didn't have problems,
your's should be much much stronger than them. The torque on the
stator, and the stator hardware is significant - but it's nothing on
these 10' turbines compared to some of the larger ones we and other
folks have built - that are perhaps supported at 5 or 6 points. (the
torque on the stator for a 17 or a 20 foot turbine is much much
greater - perhaps 4 times greater and the torque on the stator
hardware is even more because of the greater stator diameter) Once
you fix it - I think you're OK to go with what you have, make sure the
bolts are tight and make sure to either use lockwashers, locktight...
or nylocks.
Furling: - again, you need to limit the sustained output. I'm not
sure how exactly you followed the book, I wonder what your tail vane
is made of. That could be one factor. Another factor maybe... it appears from the picture that your tail bracket is almost set straight at the back of the yaw bearing (it's hard to tell for sure) - and maybe not at 45 deg like we normally do. In other words - looking straight down at the machine from the top of the yaw bearing, if the wind is coming from 12:00, the tail bracket (the piece that attaches the tail pivot to the yaw bearing) ought to be at 4:30 (I think Hugh would have it at about 4:00). (that is if you build the way you did - we have things turned around 180 deg but that shouldn't matter). If you get that wrong though it will affect furling.
DaveB - I can't get my head around the idea that the direction of blade rotation affects furling much - in my mind it's really just an issue of blade/tower clearance but perhaps I'm missing something there. His appears to be backwards from ours, the alternator is on the opposite side and the blades turn the opposite way (CC) - which means that during furling or during gusts from such a direction that the tail will not be raised, the blade tips get pulled towards the tower ~ which I think is fine so long as there's enough clearance built in. Ideally though - it probably ought to be the other way 'round.