Build a portable power pack for $25

all right here's how to build a poor man's jumper pack July 4th picnic edition first get yourself one of these battery boxes uh you can get them at Walmart for about $8 $8 $9 something like that it's a group 24 to 31 battery box says right here on the side it's the larger size that has a divider on the inside it's got a couple locks on it you push them in with your fingers and the top comes off inside there's a movable divider so you can size it for different Batteries Now what we're going to do is instead of putting in a full-size battery we're going to use a car battery in here just because we're trying to be really cheap here uh you know pretend you have a car battery laying around or something like that that's otherwise useless we're going to use this larger battery box with its extra bit of space in here to create a jumper pack take your old car battery of any kind side post is a little tougher but this video is going to be about using a top post battery okay set your battery down inside the Box you notice we've got a little bit of space left over here go ahead Slide the divider make sure it fits your battery pretty decent and uh you know no sliding around or anything like that we're going to install a cigarette lighter socket right in here in the empty space so we'll have a little bit of room for wiring and whatnot you'll need a couple extra things you need a pair of wire cutters and strippers like this that also has crimping ability they also sell the cheap versions of these at Walmart I think for 388 or something um they've got a stripper down here and the crimper Parts up in the top it's color coded they're okay you know you can make do with them but something like this is a little bit better this is an SNK brand that I bought at Napa years ago also you're going to need from Walmart the auxiliary power outlet kit this is the metal cigarette lighter socket also a inline fuse holder 12 gauge with the yellow on it this is a couple dollars at Walmart next you'll need some battery terminals that mount on the top of the battery I like these from Walmart they're a little bit cheaper but they have a wing nut on them so you can go ahead and attach other cables and and do kind of like a quick release deal on that if you don't have those you can get this style this one you're going to have to kind of pound on the top of the battery a little bit and in the back it's got these bolts that you can take out you're going to be attaching some ring terminals to these bolts which is why I like the wing nut version better cuz it's pretty much you know a do it by finger type of thing and you're also going to need a couple fuses to go in the inline fuse holder um like a 10 amp or you know you could even go as low as a 5 amp if you want depending on how much power you're going to be pulling through this thing I would suggest like a 10 uh I think the highest you probably can go is 15 and of course it doesn't say on the back of the uh package here what it's rated for but usually it's it's 10 or 15 now a little trick thing that we're doing here when you put the lid on the box it's got these cable entry hoods that go over what we want to do is you want to mount the cigarette lighter socket on underneath one of these so in case this box is sitting outside and a little bit of rain happens to fall or whatever it doesn't directly drip into the socket so you'll want to place it down here take the socket out of its package unscrew the shell and remove the bracket we're going to use the bracket to Mark the hole center of the bracket where you want it take a marker Trace inside the hole I'm using a step drill bit to punch the Hole uh you can use a small drill bit and then use a knife to finish the rest of the hole whatever you need to [Music] do okay we've got our hole drilled go ahead put your socket through the hole and attach the rear shell and tighten there we go go ahead and put the divider back in the box now take your fuse holder out of the package and you may have to strip the ends a little bit more so strip your wire then take the end and twist the strands together now you've prepped one side go ahead and do that to the second side go ahead and take one of these which is known as a butt splice and I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere but I don't really care about that right now place it on the end of the wire and twist a bit till it seats in there good now go ahead and use your crimper okay we've got that end crimped on go ahead and crimp this side too here's your new positive wire assembly go ahead and attach this to the center of the socket set your battery back in tuck your positive wior down inside your positive wire is going to be plenty long enough to go to the positive terminal over on this side go ahead and install your battery terminals now go ahead and take the wing nuts off make sure your positive wire reaches then go ahead and crimp and end on you want to put a ring terminal on this okay now you've got a ring terminal on here go ahead and make sure your negative wire is long enough then go ahead and crimp a ring terminal onto the end go ahead and attach your negative wire and that's it basically you have a 12volt socket negative wire running to negative terminal on the battery you have a fuse holder added in to the positive line going to the positive side of the battery now you're ready to to fire the pack up install a 10 amp fuse and you're done go ahead and take a multimeter if you have one or buy one at Walmart set it to DC volts usually it says dcv and go ahead and test your battery voltage this battery is reading 12.7 so it's fully charged go ahead and put your cover on you now have a nice semi- weatherproof case with a 12volt battery inside 12volt cigarette lighter socket so you can charge a cell phone or run a small power inverter or other devices which I'm going to show you in the next video we're going to run a gasifier stove off this powering the 12volt fan in the gasifier

Channel: Designed By Instinct

Views: 2,169,905

Keywords: jumper pack, deep cycle, portable, power pack, backup, solar, xantrex, energizer, duracell, energy

Id: 7Tf3fngKA-c

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2011