Cwopinger's Trail Limo Build, Travels, and BS Thread

Not sure if I could get you anything worthwhile. Everything is pretty well sealed in place behind a giant speaker box.

 

So your setup is for a woofer? I’m running wires for a dual battery system. My house battery will be in the woofer location behind the rear seat.

 

Couple of 10's in the back, yes, sir, but I do have a second battery, charge controller, inverter, and solar panel that will get all get wired up there, also -- I hope. Going to use the same guy to wire it all up and he knows his business, so he will tell me if I'm being dumb or not.

 

Got the sound deadening insulation on the back wall and floor.



May pull wire today, may take a nap

 

Morning John.

 

Sorry to let everybody down but after house cleaning and getting taxes ready yesterday the nap won out

 

That’s okay you’ll get them next time. We know you a busy man working 75 hours a week and stuff down at the precinct

 

It’s terrible, always work, work, work! I can’t wait till I retire!!

 

Most of the people I know who are retired say they don't know how they got done what they did while working.

 

It’s true! I really don’t see how I kept up with everything while I was working. It is nice to be able to just stop and say I’m done for today instead of just working from sunrise to set just to get it done on my days off.

 

You too buddy!

 

It’s going down

 

Good morning John. Enjoy your Tuesday!

 

Good morning John. What’s going on in PA today?

 

You too

 

Dual Batteries Part 1

I want to install a dual battery system in my truck to keep the “house” electronics separate from the starter battery. This is to avoid running down the starter battery from a 12v fridge, scene lighting, etc.

I considered one of the standalone systems like a Jackery but after researching them I decided I didn’t want to go that route. I felt a separate lithium battery and a DC-DC charger would work best for me. Next was to decide what brand of battery and charger to get. I looked at a LOT of the “value priced” batteries out there, while the prices were great, most of the reviews indicated the customer service was sorely lacking or nonexistent. Battleborn batteries are one of the more expensive lithium batteries out there, but they were also a company that answered the phone when I called, returned emails immediately, and called me by 9:00 am when I left a message over the weekend. They also ran a sale while I was doing this which made the price pretty nice so they got my business. I also bought a Victron DC-DC from them which is the brand they recommend. With that out of the way, it’s on to the truck.

I want to install the battery and charger behind the rear seats for security, that stuff is expensive! I from my rough measurements I’ll need to do some trimming on the plastic but it will fit. This also centralizes the weight and utilized the not very useful storage space behind the rear seats.

Now, how to get the wires into the truck. The charger is rated at 30 amps output, factoring in a 40’ total run of wire (positive and negative length) I’ll need to use 4 AWG wire to handle the load. That’s not going to fit through any small firewall opening or through the wire management channels under the door sills, time to look under the truck. The obvious place to run the wire is along the existing wire harness so this is my plan. How to get the wires into the cab is the problem.

After crawling around under the truck I found one hole with a rubber plug toward the back of the cab but directly over the driveshaft. It was also about 2” in diameter too. Any waterproof cable gland for that size hole is going to be big and would interfere with the driveshaft, time to keep looking. On the back wall of the cab I found 1/2” knockout plugs on both corners. That’s all I was able to find for possible entry points. The 1/2” hole would need to be drilled out for a 4 gauge cable gland and what to do for the second wire? Using both sides of the cab isn’t going to work, that means drilling a hole in my perfectly good truck.

With no other easy options I can find I thought about it a couple of days. I asked @six5crèéd to do it for me but he's in NC and that was a long drive for a couple of holes so I put on my big boy pants and decided to do it myself. I take measurements upside down, convert left and right, peek behind body panels and decide it will work. Measure once, cut twice or something like that… so here we go.


Take a deep breath and enlarge the existing hole first since that is less stressful.

Now, take a deeper breath and drill the second hole




I’m glad that is over! Since I have seats and trim out let’s take a little intermission and install some sound deadening mat back here.


Spray a little primer on the raw metal, top coat of French Beige- it doesn’t match, not even close and install the cable glands.


Now to run the wires. BatteryCablesUSA.com has some really good pricing on all copper, USA made, automotive and marine grade wire. I recommend them for your large cable needs.

Even with the auto spec wire I like to run stuff inside a wire loom under the truck. The positive wire is color coded so I can tell which is which if I ever need to.


All tidy and zip tied to the factory harness.






Into the engine bay with the factory stuff.


This is where I’ll need to stop until I get some heat resistant tape as it’s close to the first cat and exhaust manifold. All the factory wiring has heat tape on it so I’ll copy their lead. I’ve got it tucked up out of the way for now until I get to the auto parts store.

Let’s have a congratulatory beer and start getting stuff back together.


This is where our happy story ends. As I started to put the trim back in I discovered one slight problem. The positive wire doesn’t exit exactly where I thought it would and I’ve got a little interference problem. More in part two.

 

I see why you needed a nap now


Looks great and awesome write up, sorry about being so far away and not being able to torch those holes


Awaiting part 2

 

I thought you said a beer?




You know how Pabst won the blue ribbon?




It was competing against ketchup and gas

 

You would have caught the measurement oops before you fired off the torch so I should have made the drive! Lol. It’s going to work out, will probably just take another hole


Don’t be knocking the PBR