Vagabond Drifter Camper Buildout and Mods

The stock tank is fairly easy to drop. It's just held on there by two straps. All you need is to support it with a jack, and working on it as close to empty as possible.

 

This one, correct? https://battlebornbatteries.com/product/12v-lifepo4-deep-cycle-battery/

 

Wish I knew you were doing it earlier - You could have taken your truck somewhere else and just had Toyota reimburse you.

@Iggy I think he has the 32 gallon tank

 

Ah yeah, that's a bit more of a pain. Mines been in and out twice, I'm glad I didn't do it.

 

Around 8ah on startup, settles to .7-1ah consistently through the night. Problem is, now my fridge is getting hot and is working itself. I am going to try redirecting air upwards into the tent instead of letting it come out below, overworking the fridge

 

This one if you want it heated
https://battlebornbatteries.com/product/100ah-12v-lifepo4-heated-battery-kit/

 

I was just gonna ask - when you say "not hanging", what does that mean exactly?
Do you have some kind of capacity meter for the battery, and it's just dropping too low?
Based on the second quote, I'm guessing it's not a problem where one/both of the heater/fridge die because they're running at the same time?

 

Yes I monitor battery level and I drop below 40% almost every night

 

I talked with my local mechanic and he said that he cant touch recalls and that only a Toyota dealership can do it. So I scheduled the appointment with a dealer for today and the service manager started spinning a tale of how hard it will be and all the pain and how it will take all day. Im worried that they are actually incompetent enough to wreck the whole thing. The Drifter alone is worth its weight in gold considering how long I waited for it!

 

Gotcha. I guess that's not the hardest thing to believe then.
If we take your numbers over 10-12 hours, that's gonna be 10-15ah for the heater, and the fridge is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-35ah if it's running more.
Less sun hours for re-charging right now too, so this is pretty much the worst your overnight drawdown will get unless you add in other power draws.

I'd definitely try the heater vent aiming you mentioned first, and see how that goes.
And if you're not getting back up to 100% during the day, then maybe consider more solar before more battery. Cheaper that way, at least.
Otherwise yeah, you could look at a lithium, or even just add a second lead-acid.

 

@socalexpeditions

Good advice here. If you're starting the night below 100% charge due to the shorter days, adding more capacity is just kicking the can down the road if you don't have excess amp hours coming in from your panels already.

 

This is a relatively easily solution. You have a couple of options here:

A) I usually freeze my stuff in the fridge and defrost anything I want to eat inside a small cooler

B) Otherwise you can use a transit case or wrap it in reflectix and turn off the fridge at night

The ultimate goal is to reduce the amps you're consuming, any decision you can make to reduce your fridge's power usage is going to help out here. I specifically do a combination of both, and also have a large 1 gallon jug of water that I freeze that keeps the temp maintained.

 

I'm always getting back up to 100% during the day - It just drains extremely quickly. I'm in the upper 90s before sunset, and around 38-40% by the morning. I know nothing about batteries, but the 160W panel up top seems to be fine?

I have a hard time freezing things since I go out for longer times - If I buy anything from the store frozen, I just put it at the bottom of the fridge and home it takes forever.

But I don't have room for a frozen jug of water in the 40 quart fridge, just too small. I will try adding a reflectix case! I heard those help a little.

 

At least it's not like a regular car where they have to go in the trunk (or backseat) for it. I have extra cameras I put in my car when it goes to the dealership now after the lube tech took my truck on a joyride

 

I know I'm super late to the mattress topper conversation from a while ago, but for another reference point, I've got a 1" latex topper over the original Drifter mattress, and I've found it to be the best compromise.
(I'll add the caveat that mine was in the first production batch, so I don't know if anything has changed with the mattress since then.)

Sure, I'd prefer it to be thicker, but the extra inch already forces me to pull the mattress back 10-12" so I can stow the majority of the bedding up in front of it (pic below).
Personally, I wouldn't want to go any thicker unless I really had to, because when I first added the topper, trying to shut the lid with my sleeping bag (opened up) over the whole bed was already pushing it.
And it's already comfortable enough like this that I can sleep just fine.

Here's how my bedding gets stowed with the 1" latex topper on. That's just a 10* Coleman mummy bag (probably ~1/3 of it laying on top of the mattress vs sitting in the cavity), and I've got the full-size pillow and an extra fleece blanket up there in the front too.

 

Ok yeah, more battery then.
I mean, it does sound like more drawdown than what you'd expect from the numbers you gave before, so maybe this battery has lost some of its rated capacity already too.

 

I will try redirecting the heat upstairs and seeing the difference it makes. I mean, I am running the fridge at 34 degrees always

 

If you've got AGM and you haven't set the right bulk charge cutoffs on your charge controller, or if it's not set for the correct battery type, I'd check there first. Also if you've had your battery a long time and you spend a lot of time under 50%, you're eating into max capacity.

A fully charged (100%) Odyssey battery should have an open circuit measurement of 12.85-12.9 Volts DC after resting for about ~30 minutes. Depth of Discharge at 50% is measured at 12.2 volts after rest. These measurements are made at 77ºF.

I'd probably want to check to see the health of your battery. Another issue is that it's possible you're using more electricity through the heater than you're aware. It will spike if it's set too low, basically if it's not burning enough diesel to heat the combustion chamber, it will run the glowplug longer than you expect. If it's cycling on and off, each cycle utilizes the glowplug. This is one of the reasons why it's important to choose the right size diesel heater for your application.

wrt freezing stuff in the freezer. How long are your trips? I usually go on week+ trips.

This is what goes in the freezer:
Steaks, pot stickers, clam chowder, frozen vegetables, Ice cream Sandwiches, Ice Pops, Vodka or Whisky, Ramen noodles, Chicken carasses, Dim sum, Gallon jug of water, Small frozen water bottle (this gets rotated out with the one in the cooler), Jambalaya, Japanese Curry, Chicken Biriyani, Chicken Korma.

This is what goes in the Cooler:
Small frozen water bottle, Hummus, Yogurt, Meats or Other Entrees that are defrosting, Fresh Vegetables that need to stay cool (Bok Choi, Broccoli, String Beans, Salads), Restaurant Takeout, Pizza Crust or dinner roll crust, Snack cheeses, Soda, Beer, Cheddar, Deli meats.

This is what goes in the room temp food box:
Salted Duck Egg, Regular Chicken Eggs, Onions, Garlic, Tomatoes, Bananas, Ginger, Cumin, Pepper, Salt, Other spices, Dry pasta, Pasta Sauces, Rice, Chicken Broth, Costco Pies, Pepperoni, a Block of Parmigiano-Reggiano, Sliced bread, Soup mixes, Tea Leaves, Coffee Beans, Pancake mix, Sriracha, Oyster Sauce, Hoisin Sauce.

Obv, menu changes depending on the trip, but usually, I'm pretty flexible. I'll break out the wok and make beef chow fun, or go Italian and make risotto. If we're sitting somewhere for a long time, I could make pho.

But yeah, the other choice is more battery capacity so you don't dip below 50% on Lead Acid or AGM. Otherwise it's switch to Lithium where you can drain the battery to near 0 with no consequences. Just have to be realistic w/ what you can do with the stuff you have.

Also, a 160watt solar panel won't make enough power if it doesn't get enough sun. That's a common problem during cloudy days, when there's smoke in the air, of if the panel is simply pointed in the wrong direction. A good way to counteract this is a DC-DC charger like from Redarc, Renogy, or CTEK, to keep the battery charged by both solar and the alternator when it's called for.

 

You said you dont know a lot about batteries so the biggest difference between AGM and lithium batteries is the way they draw down, as you pull power from a AGM battery the volts will start to taper off and when you have used up roughly half you battery Ah rating the voltage will drop below the needed volts to power your load. A lithium battery will maintain full voltage right up until the last amp is pulled from the battery, so a 100Ah AGM battery you only get roughly 50 usable Ah where as a 100Ah lithium battery you get the full 100Ah of usable power. So if you are dropping down to 40% over night you could simply add a second 100Ah AGM battery and be just fine, or to save space, weight, and get the same capacity as those two AGM batteries you could swap to a single 100Ah lithium battery.

Also I was running into the exact same problem a few weeks ago where my heater and fridge were fighting each other all night, my solution was to simply leave the fridge outside over night, it was dropping down into the 20's over night so the fridge never had to run.

 

My upcoming trip will be three weeks! Let me play with the battery controller stuff tomorrow and get back to you. I have been meaning to read the manual cover-to-cover, so I will do so tomorrow and report back. I will also do a test and set wakeup times to check the battery level tomorrow.

Im lucky that the panel gets sun almost everyday sunrise till sunset.