Negative busbar placement.

My wife has a '17 Tacoma that she's going to be living in/working out of for 2 months this spring.

I'm installing a solar getup to power her lights and fridge and charge her phone and laptop. Batteries, charge controller, and fuse box will all live in a platform in the bed of the truck.

Main question I have at this point is: where are people locating a negative busbar in this sort of arrangement?

I've searched and seen lots of under-hood setups, but that's sub-optimal here. No point in running everything from the bed to under the hood, and back, when everything that needs power is already in the bed.

The stock bedliner is there. I know I can cut a piece of it out and attach the negative busbar there, but this truck will get sold someday and I'd rather not have a wart like that if it can be avoided. I was hoping someone had a cleaner solution they could refer me to.

Thanks much.

 

I personally would place it next to the aux fuse panel in the bed platform
. This was you can just use 2-conductor wire for everything. No need to cut holes in the bed liner, no need to put unnecessary screw holes in the body.

In an even more ideal setup, get one of the blue-seas fuse panels with the ground bus built in. This way you can have a heavy gauge positive and a heavy gauge negative from here to the aux battery bank and or done with it. All wires can be terminated at this single location.
Get something like this to keep all wiring super clean

Monoprice 102821 Access Series 14 Gauge AWG CL2 Rated 2 Conductor Speaker Wire/ Cable - 250ft Fire Safety In Wall Rated, Jacketed In White PVC material 99.9% Oxygen-Free Pure Bare Copper

https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-10...+monoprice&dpPl=1&dpID=31-MBjdi49L&ref=plSrch

A spool of 14awg for the smaller electronics (lights, USB charger) and maybe some heavier gauge for larger electronics if needed.

 

Off-Grid Engineering has this https://www.**************/collecti...ts/oge-blue-sea-auxiliary-power-outlet-system that you can connect to a fuse box under the hood or straight to the battery ($69)

I installed this one https://www.**************/collecti...-auxiliary-power-outlet-system-with-voltmeter ($99) along with Blue Sea fuse box up front when I installed dual batteries and mounted it to the door of the cubby on the driver side in the bed.

Very easy install and comes with everything you need to get power back there.