Vagabond Drifter Camper Buildout and Mods

I think this is applicable here... ?

Have been wanting a small drinks or lunch fridge in the cab since I was aware of the Waeco CF-11 (and now Dometic) many years ago. I organized the back of the Land Cruiser's sleep platform to cradle my 40L fridge just behind and center to the driver so I could reach for cold drinks. So I took a look at this, as I randomly do with many things from time to time, and find that the CF 11 is starting to push $500.. which is a bit crazy even if Dometic makes a very quality product. Happily Amazon has the related/recommend bar from time to time and an "Alpicool" 15L showed up.. for $179, or about 1/3 the smaller capacity Dometic. Looking closer at it, the Alpicool appeared to be a legit compressor driven fridge/freezer in a small package (not thermoelectric), which is perfect for a Tacoma cab which leaves a food fridge or freezer dedicated unit for the rear and doesn't require me to carry a soft cooler or get into the back to dig for a drink.

Wow, this is getting long. So I dug more and found about 3 other models of varying design and landed on this Ausranvik (lol) unit.

Car Fridge Portable Freezer (16 Quart), 12V Fridge, -4°F~50°F, DC 12V and AC 110V Compatible, for car, boat, truck, camping, road trip

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KSPY3KQ I chose it because the lid latches and it came with both AC and DC connectors. It is a little different design than the more gray "Engel" looking competition. I haven't had much test time, but it is taking it about 45min to drop from 75 to 32F.

NOTE: If you look at these, you need to be careful. The thermoelectric (worthless imo) units will advertise in terms of -10/20 degrees, and they can heat (+10/20) against ambient temps. You could also hold a drink next to your AC or heater vent too...

Here's the Alpicool

VBENLEM 20 L Car Fridge Compressor Cool Box Stainless Steel Holiday Insulated Box Mini Fridge Cool Box Car and Socket

https://www.amazon.com/VBENLEM-Compressor-Portable-Refrigerator-Electric/dp/B07TKRY1FG

ok, that's another one. HERE's the Alpicool

$180 Alpicool C15 Portable Freezer,12 Volt Car Refrigerator, 16 Quart (15 Liter) Fast Cooling 12V Car Fridge -4℉~68℉, Car Cooler, 12/24V DC and 100-240V AC for Outdoor, Camping, RV, Truck, Boat

https://www.amazon.com/Alpicool-Portable-Refrigerator-Vehicle-freezer/dp/B073WYS3TR

I'm heading out for a few days around July 4th so it should get a better test then. Should work good in the passenger footwell or behind the passenger seat. It would fit well in a dual cab in the rear center seat as well, and the fan exhaust lends itself to not be potentially blocked.

ok that's enough, thought I would make a post to bring awareness that something like this exists and is pretty reasonably priced.

 

Got the GooseGear buildout completed, had a few fitment issues that I had to sort out as things didnt really line up the way they should have. One thing left to fix is the height of the brace on the fridge side so that I can place a board down to create a sleeping platform on the bottom, right now its about 2” higher than it needs to be.

 

i relocated mine into the license plate area. i had hoped it would fit 'into the numbers' but wasnt to be....

 

For those of you who wired a fuse block from the engine bay (dual battery setup under the hood) into the back of the truck bed for the VO panel, how long was your run?

 

Roughly 28 feet, IIRC...

 

Can you just run a 1-2 guage positive wire from the battery to the rear of the truck and run a shorter ground and attach it to the frame somwhere beneath the bed? (I would even grind the paint off the frame for this ground) Is it absolutaely neccessary to run a ground wire also from the battery/front of vehicle? Seems unnecessary.

 

I grounded to an existing ground bolt underneath my bed (gmc canyon) to shorten the run. Reduces total run and voltage drop.

 

This makes the most sense to me. I want to do the same.

I have seen others also run two wires (positive/ground) from engine compartment to the back of the vehicle. Seems overkill to run a ground wire all the way from engine compartment IMO.

 

I ran mine as a two-wire setup all the way, for two dumb reasons:

1) When I was installing the wire, I didn't know enough about how the system was going to work.
2) I used "zip cord" wire, where the two are bonded together (obviously separable) and I just stuck with that.

Now that the system is finished and I understand how it works more comprehensively (I learned as I went), if I were to do it again, I'd just ground to the chassis underneath the bed. That said, it works just fine as is, no issues. My FWC was wired the same way and never had any issues either, even with significantly smaller wiring.

 

I also was lazy for v1 of my fridge wiring. I picked up 30' of 10AWG where the positive and negative are also enclosed in a sheath, which allowed me to run it very easily to the front of the bed and in through an existing hole (1st gen). There is more voltage drop that I want, but I just set the fridge to the "medium" setting so it runs at the received ~12.x volts.

 

My fridge runs off the camper battery... so the camper battery may not be getting the full voltage from the truck battery, but the fridge and everything else gets full gas!

 

I ran a positive and negative wires as well, I have a house battery in the back with a charge controller so it doesn’t really care about the voltage drop. I got 13.1V at the battery and 12.8V at the charge controller so a 0.3V drop.

 

I don’t see a problem with this, I did the same thing to my house battery in the cab.

 

Thanks all. I already have my auxiliary battery hooked up under the hood and have it running my fridge inside the cab behind the driver seat. I bought this Blue Sea Systems Fuse Block

$41 Blue Sea Systems 5026 ST Blade Fuse Block 12 Circuit with Ground and Cover

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001P6FTHC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and planned to run a positive and negative wire straight from the auxiliary battery to this fuse block (4 AWG) to power the lights / fan in the camper.

Does this sound correct?

I geek out on researching a lot of components about this build but electrical is NOT one of them. I just don't understand it

 

4 awg seems like overkill if you're just running lights/fridge. It certainly wouldn't hurt, other than being more difficult to work with than smaller wire.

This diagram is useful for sizing your wire:
http://assets.bluesea.com/files/resources/reference/20010.pdf

If you are just running low draw devices in the bed, I would go with smaller wire. But if you think you might move or add a battery inside the camper, it would be nice to have the large wire already in place.

 

The main power wire going to the fuse block should be a lower gauge? 4AWG seems correct which will be going to the main power bus on the fuse block. For each individual circuits going out of the fuse block to power lights, fridge, etc. you can size the wire accordingly.

 

Not oem. It was from Amazon for $15. The oem one mounts weird. Has a weird cut out and then 4 small screws. See this relocation bracket for reference


The amazon one has the wiring go through one threaded stud and you use one nut to tighten everything.


As for wiring, I just tapped into the wiring under the bed that goes to the oem camera. Like someone mentioned, there’s a small connector under the tailgate you can follow to see where the camera wires are. I pulled out one of the connectors and tapped into the wiring. Btw it’s not your traditional wiring colors:
1 CV- (White) Camera Video Negative
2 CV+ (Red) Camera Video Positive
3 CGND (Blue) Camera GND (Shield)
4 CB+ (Black) Camera Power

Then I chased up the wires near the driver bed rail and connected it to the Drifter corner panel using this deutsch connector:


Here’s more pics of the camera and output picture:

 

Where are you going to mount it? I have one in the Drifter and used 2 awg. And like others have mentioned, the negative wire (also 2 awg) is mounted to the frame under the Drifter so I didn’t have to run it all the way to the aux battery under the hood like the positive wire.

btw welding cable is a lot more malleable than traditional copper wire, especially for large gauges. Brands on Amazon are EWCS or Temco (which I use bc its local to me).

 

Total Power Draw:
Fridge - 3A
Fan - 2A
Lights - 2A
Total - <10A if all running at max at the same time

The fridge is the only appliance that may be a bit voltage sensitive.

For 10A and a 25ft round trip wire distance, a much smaller wire would be sufficient (8/10 awg). But, I understand the desire to oversize. It's not that much more money for more copper and if it prevents you from potentially having to upsize the wire in the future, go for it.

These are all assumptions and everybody's system is different, but unless you have a high draw appliance going in the camper, I don't see the benefit in running 4 awg. The main reason to run bigger wire to the bed for most people is if your battery is back there and you are charging (high amps) over the run.

 

Wire size is the one thing I don't mind going oversize on, oversize is peace of mind, undersize is a fire hazard. Just make sure you use the proper breakers and fuses because larger wire can carry higher amperage and if it shorts to ground can also cause a fire. I always calculate what my max draw on all circuits is, add 10-15% and install what ever braker that may be at the battery.