BEST 12 volt 4 Wheeling setup yet, plus advice & reviews

hey where am I gonna pop out of this time Ronnie Dahl four-wheeling Australia this video all about my 12 watt electrics in my landcruiser I've had the landcruiser for six years now as a lot of you may be aware of and I've changed a lot of things but one of the hidden changes you haven't seen has been the electrics the aim of this video is to give you guys an idea on how you should maybe set up your vehicle I'm also going to go through all the products in the vehicle pros and cons now I've had some of these products for six years some only maybe one or two but this would be a comprehensive just rip everything apart and talk about it pros and cons comprehensive video coming up guys skip points down below if you just want to see another section on its own but I'll highly suggest you watch the video from start to end because then you'll get a very good idea on what you should do and what you should not do stay tuned there are so many things going on in this vehicle we're going to start with the batteries how many batteries are having why I have the whole manifest right here so I make sure we're going to cover everything so I think we start with the batteries well look at that we've had a location change and we're about to talk about batteries for the manifests up here sort of blow away normally a dual battery system will consist of a cranking battery and an auxiliary battery like a deep cycle battery AGM something that can withstand like a long low charge but not high charge I don't have that I used to have it but I've changed the setup for one well for a couple of reasons one is winching a lot to pair two batteries with each other so I've got more juice going to the winch it'll inflict a lot less stress on a battery the other reason is when I'm driving at night and I'll have all my lights on and I'm just putting around idling around because it's low range it draws 55 amps with all those lights on in that case if you are idling and you're drawing off one battery your alternator will not actually keep up with it because you're also no need to be spinning faster to generate that power and that idle speed you're also a little not be generating enough power so essentially you are drawing on your battery as you're driving around from the 40 lights on let's take it up another notch you're winching and you add all your lights on that is a lot of stress on one battery so therefore I've got to crank your batteries as opposed to a deep cycle and a crank up now I do have a deep cycle battery and it is in fact a lithium battery and that is in the back that is my third battery we'll get two lithium's I'll touch on lithium's are they worth it are they're not worth it but for Leo we're talking about how setting these two batteries up although these two batteries are kind of paired up they are isolated so the main battery is oscillated from the second battery but I can link them I'll get to that they are isolated by 200 amp isolation or isolation node that's down here but I can jump-start this battery from that battery by pairing them temporarily by pressing this button right here it's a temporary switch you hold it in you turn the key to start the vehicle and that then jumps the main battery I use the power from this battery to jumpstart the front battery the main battery make sure that you get that feature in that is a very easy feature to do and it should be part of all dual battery systems but most accessory stores will not tell you about this and will charge you extra for it it's worth getting is worth paying extra for another cool thing with this system is if I've parked up at a campsite and I want to preserve this battery I don't want to drain the radio on this battery I can hit this button Dogzilla we override this button all of my accessories are now on the second battery it deactivates the cranked battery from the whole system and everything is drawn off the second battery my radio my comms charging ports everything it's all running off the second battery so I can leave it on overnight forget about it next day I can still start the car because the main battery is disconnected I can also pair these two batteries together for when i'm winching or when I'm driving with all my lights on to link both batteries all I have to do is press this winch button here which links it and in fact activates my winch and also pairs these two batteries you can see over here even the battery link is now on that's the temporary switch we just talked about before it's over turn it off see so that's temporary this is how I can link it permanently and this is on the PTM this is a Power Distribution module it's high-tech it's like smart warrant for your vehicle this has been a different video because this is so much to explain in itself when I press this button I've now linked both batteries permanently until I choose to deactivate it alternative vehicle off then I'll deactivate us all and therefore when i'm winching it's not drawing or everything off one battery is drawing off two batteries yes i understand the powers coming from the alternator but it's going through the batteries and then out which can cause a lot of stress on your battery this is how the batteries are charged the main one is charged from the old snare of course the second battery is charged from the BCDC which is a 1225 d or break it down the 1225 means it's 12 volts and it puts 25 amps into this battery at any stage that's the most you can do that's this capacity D is for solar that allows me to put solar into it so there's an enzyme plug on the side of it here also have a solar panel up here that goes into this battery so this battery is completely charged bullet on [Music] the third and final battery which is a lithium battery I've had IgM in the past absorbed glass mat battery once I switch to Leafeon so much better so much better if you want a good battery that lasts a long time and you do a lot of traveling lithium battery years ago now I will deep dive into this in a video lithium versus AGM other batteries but in this video we're gonna keep it short I condensed because there's a lot to talk about so lithium battery a lot lighter cycle life is 2,000 plus cycles from 100 percent down to 20 percent when you get to 20 percent on my lithium battery you still got 13 volts this one is an old spark 100 amp hour I'm saying an AGM is a lot heavier they're about 25 kilos to 30 kilos and a soccer life on an AGM battery is only generally about 400 to 450 cycles from 100 percent down to 50 percent wants to go beyond 50 percent you're looking at 11 volts and 10 volts not good I've gone through a lot of AGM battery system on this vehicle since the switch to lithium is still going strong and it's enough to power reefing and a so much lighter the charge is five times faster than a normal AGM VM that reminded me system 30 amps what perils my lithium the red arc system up here does the BMS 30 that powers this battery from the front so draws power from the front battery or alternator to charge this while I'm driving the battery parked up here it's using solar or if I'm parked up at home AC plug I'll put the IC in I can charge the battery up pretty fast just a quick pros and cons on the BMS 30 the con is it is big so you have to have a dedicated place to put this in a camper trailer or a caravan is pretty easy but in a vehicle it may not be that easy the pro here is instead of having a BC DC charger an AC charger and a solar charger all separate and always wires going everywhere it's a lot less mess and everything is sorted out in one unit so if you buy this unit I would say you probably be spending about the same well if not less than if you had to get all the different components and all the wiring and all the time spent setting it up you're better off just getting this one you know as far as I'm concerned that is a bloody good unit and if you have a vehicle you want to set up for you know long distance traveling and you need to power house battery and you get a lot of accessories you want to power I would suggest getting something like that or something similar that can do all three things just make sure that it has a lithium profile in it because you may not have a lithium battery now you may decide to later and if you don't have a lithium profile in the system you're running like this one does then you can't run a lithium battery another thing I've done with the Bemis 30 is I have to display outputs coming out of it now I used to only have one I can control everything and see everything from either either one it just shows the same thing let's talk inverters now I have a 700 watt inverter almost at 750 to 701 throats at red our converter happens to be the powerfully inverter comes in here so it's behind there comes out as panel goes since it is box and that's where I'll charge AC back to DC and there's all the DC ports now you know for your iPhones and cigarette lighter plugs it's all here I've had many inverters in the past and to be honest I find that most people don't need an inverter that's any higher than 350 Watts unless you're going to start running coffee machines and all that kind of stuff then you're talking to thousands of 3000 watt inverters but then you also needing lithium batteries and you need some serious power to to you know to run something like a two to three thousand watt inverter it's crazy amounts of power one thing you should know about inverters if you leave the inverter on so the inverters plugged in but there's nothing coming out of the other end of it it is still using power it is still converting the DC power to AC power you can actually drain your battery overnight it's done it to me before in my previous video where I discuss electronics we're talking about inverters and someone comments the down below and said why are you converting DC into AC I need to put it back to DC what he means by that is most of our camera charges and most of our battery charges while they convert the AC back to DC so essentially what we are doing is we are taking our DC power putting it through an inverter to change it to a AC and then it comes back out of the inverter going into a charger like this which then converts it back to DC why are we doing this it's counterintuitive so at the end of the day you don't really need an inverter unless you're running a coffee machine and you're going up to the high our output because you're not going to get that in DC that's all in AC instead of doing this with an inverter why not just do that now I'm eating my own words here because I'm still using my inverter and that is because most of my charges are AC plugged so at the end of the day there is a lot of stuff you have to change and I'll probably will do that in future but for me because I'm doing a lot of content creation and I have a lot of different gear that uses different charges I don't think I can get away from an inverter but if I was a camper just like everyone else 9-5 job went out camping I would not need an inverter at all just get DC powered items let's talk about solar power and the solar system that I have not that solar system up there the solar system on the vehicle starting with the roof we have two 80 watt panels on the roof the front one powers the front auxilary battery you know the second battery I got that keeps it topped up and that is the best thing that I've changed on my whole solar setup all the solar power I've done that's the best thing I've done is that now that is getting constant charge so when I leave the vehicle for a couple of weeks or or stay at camp and I'm draining off that battery I'm always charging it back on but I'm they were charging the front one that has sorted out that problem on the rear another 80 watt red our panel this solely powers the lithium battery in the back and I find that that keeps it going even with that fridge outside that Engle you're like on a hot sunny day out in the full elements that keeps it at a hundred percent in here and the fridge is still running sometimes it's such an efficient fridge but the way I set this up is this perfect that is one thing I'm not going to change the solar is awesome but it doesn't always go to plan with solar when you're kicking around a camp for a while and we set up a base camp and we're charging a lot of gear we're using a lot of electrical items only watts is not enough sometimes therefore I carry two blankets this one here is an amorphous blanket this is a 112 watts red arc amorphous blanket very expensive I think it's up around a $2,000 mark probably even higher but it'll outperform anything on a daylight today so this is a winter blanket this is usually the one I'll carry around without having to carry that big 200 watt I thought even on the summer trip if I want to cut down on weight I just bring this one because that is enough because when you add that to an annual panel you almost got 200 watts of power going in so that's generally enough so that's how this is powering the front battery right now the BCD c12 25 D which is the solar input but when it's a good sunny day like bright Sun this panel kicks ass this is a 200 watt Allspark panel and a finger lock about it is the fact that it has these so it's kind of like a solar panel but it's a solar blanket folds up to nothing 200 watts so when I paired that with the 80 watt panel on the roof regardless of a charge in a rear or the front that keeps ask man if I'm going to base camp for a couple days and I know it and I'm going for a family trip and we're just bunker down on the beach I will bring both and I'll plug them both into both ends I'm fully charged that's my solar pretty much you know nutshell the plug for this is right here behind the spare tire so that's how I can run that into the BMS run that into the BCD see lots of solar do anything I might change with my whole solar setup as I say this really good I don't really much changed I think it's just the fact that this I have to have the hood or bonnet open to plug that in what I recommend is you have at least 10 meters remember a camp we like to park in shade right shelter that's one of the five survival things so we always camp in the shade or we try to at least anyway and when we do that we're putting our solar panels in the shade so solar panels aren't going to help us much and that is another reason to have sold blankets maybe even consider not putting solar panels on your vehicle so if you don't want anything permanently fixed because there's a waste of time for you and just get a blanket I went and bought this particular charger here is a see take a just a charger AC charger you plug it into your household plug at home off an extension lead and and what it does is it'll trickle charge your front batteries you got to charge it for like 12 to 24 hours that's what I did with my front auxilary button on the front crank battery actually so when you come home from a trip it's actually not a bad idea to just disconnect your batteries and discharging with this because the crank battery never gets 100 percent charge because it's running off the alternator it doesn't get all those other profiles that that to really get it up to a hundred percent it's not something you have to do but if you want to take care of your stuff it's not a bad thing to do so lights on the vehicle well you need to keep in mind how much power they draw so for example all of mine combined all of them will draw about 55 or 50 amps as you'll see down here this is a PDM now as I switch on my lights on let's switch them all on I'll show what it's drawing so we got side lights roof lights work lights reverse lights and now that I'll flick the high beams on boom so now we have the roof and the front LEDs on and we have the hedge Hardys on we'll have a look over here and that there will tell us what the battery is actually drawing out so because we have the fridge on and the lights on that's what it's charging well drawing there it's 6.4 6.8 oh it's jumping in between that's from the auxiliary battery amps and auxiliary battery voltage here we have main battery voltage as you can see it's dropped at 2.4 and that's because it's running off one battery and were idling that's what I was talking about and it's now at 46 amps or hands being drawn out of the mind so now we join the batteries that should help it a bit says just jumped up as I just joined a batteries 12.7 so does that idle so this will give you an idea of when you just parked up and you're working around you're setting up camp or whatever or you're trying to recover someone if this is sitting and idling it's going to really draw out of your battery so I switch that off so if I'm paired it now and now that I turn all the lights off what lights are off literally lights are off now we're back down I'm running to scan gauges as you can see as well this one just to keep an eye on everything and half of the battery and this one here just to keep an eye on the vehicle itself fifty to fifty-five amps that's a lot of power and I mentioned that earlier when we're talking about the the batteries so you really got to make sure that you set up to be able to cater for all that power with your dual battery system or whatever it is you're doing well maybe consider not getting so many bloody lights that could be another good one right so you know be careful what you're doing other lighting to consider when you work out your battery life and all that even these lights here they don't draw much but everything adds up in the end these lights are a combi lights so we have red light for nighttime to keep the bugs away and we have white light you can run both at the same time you really want to but red and white two different switches same thing over here so the red light will keep the bugs to a minimum and the white light will give you a better light for cooking and seeing things but will attract bugs if there are bugs around that's pretty much all the Lots that I have on my vehicle I'll have two four six eight I've got eight rock lights on the cruiser I'll go to two spotlights which are two lights and one and then I got the roof lights everything combined six hundred seventy watts there you go that's what I'm running and with my power system that is why I run to crank batteries on the front just cater for all that we're almost there folks winches I have two of those we'll start with the real one the real one has an oscillation switch underneath the bonnet the hood so right there is the isolation switch for the rear week so on/off so I do have to open the bonnet to get to it that way no one can come at the back here and tamper with it or if one of the kids grabs my remotes inside the cab they can't just spool it out while I'm driving or whatever it is paired up to both batteries as well this front winch control box here the oscillation on that is on the PTM which is inside which I showed you before that's that winch button or pressing before ya press on press off that's how activates this winch here so that it's live I then plug the cable in and then run it in my previous video I had two fridges in in the build in a setup it was a different canopy if you do need fridge and freezer consider going a commie fridge like this because if you have two separate fridges one as a freezer one as a fridge your two compressors rolling and that will double the draw on your vehicle and your battery and before you know it look some people have a hard enough time to maintain one fridge the way I'll set mine up I can maintain is easy I can leave in the driveway as long as there's full Sun or as long as it's outside and it gets to be the Sun the solar keeps the batteries charged and this doesn't draw much at all I think the most it'll draw is up to point seven and that's when it's running so just be mindful of that and that's why I've only got one fridge now the other fridges in the trailer so hook up the trailer that's a whole different story righto guys that was a brief look at my electrical setup well it's been more than a brief look but look we can deep dive into a lot of things and we will in different videos but there will be that dual battery system video I know you guys have been waiting for it for quite a while probably about five months it is coming just be patient I'll show you the right way the wrong way the cheap way the best way to set up a dual battery system what to look out for and what not to do also if you want to dedicate a video on perhaps inverters you know because I've got dive more into that there will be one on lithium batteries as well I'll probably do it at the same time as talking about the dual battery system but there is a lot of stuff that can be covered here so if there's anything else you guys can think of that you would like more information on comment down below now we'll leave a playlist at the end of this video and down in the description below and that playlist will have all my electrical tips that I've done in the past possibly even some are all setups I shall leave them out because this is the best setup and it also be that solar the solar video I did a whole video dedicated to solar so you guys can get a bit more of an idea about all solar panels because in this video we just touched briefly on everything so thanks again for watching guys and check out one of his playlists cheers guys catch you later

Channel: Ronny Dahl

Views: 96,282

Rating: 4.9576559 out of 5

Keywords: Off-road, tracks, 4wheeling, adventure, 4x4-off-road, vehicle electrics, 12 volt vehicle system, off-road electrics, how to 12 volt, best 12 volt setup, landcruiser electrics, Lithium battery, overlanding 12 volt

Id: SgBc249DbwQ

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 28 2019