Dual Battery Install. House Battery Setup & Anderson Plug. Backyard Mechanic 12

[Music] good eye ladies and gents and welcome to another episode of backyard mechanics brought to you again by fulcrum suspensions the suspension specialists now what I'm discussing today doesn't have a lot to do with suspension but they're still going to help you out with any purchase you make off their website just follow the link down in the description there and there's a promotional code in tents 15 and that's going to get you 15% off site-wide now what are we looking at today this empty desk doesn't tell you very much so magic okay there it is okay as you can see that's a whole lot of battery stuff deep-cycle battery there projector dc-to-dc solar charger a dual battery extension kit and a whole load of accessories so by looking at that some of you can already tell we've put a second battery in something which is the vehicle next to me here my old man's 150 series Prada he's just had that for a couple of months now this projector until each our DC slash solar charger is exactly the same one that I've got in my Patrol to charge the third and fourth batteries yeah I've got that many batteries and I really like the thing this comes in it I believe it was a touch under four hundred dollars and it's 25 amp charger and it has the solar multi-point power tracking regulator built into it so compared to other brands on the market this is actually a really good price you'd be looking at over $600 for that same sort of capability in another brand I've had it in mine for three months so it does really well we've got the century deep cycle wet cell battery here wet cell because this battery is going under the bonnet of this prado the 150 prado has a really nice spot that is made for a second battery it's even got the same sort of tray layout on the bottom of it there so that's going under the bonnet we've got a battery clamp there got all the necessary fuses Kable lugs and over here this extension kit we're actually putting the were actually also putting a anderson plug all the way from the main battery of the car to the back to power the camper trailer we've got so this works out quite effective cost wires to just snip the ends off that run the plug to the back so let's step away from the desk take you over here I'll show you the engine bay layer on the Prato talk about exactly where this stuff is all gonna go that's our spot right there now the main battery is over the other side in exactly the same position and this has the same little base as the main battery does is just missing the little plastic tray that that battery sits in it's even got the spots here where a battery clamp tie-down would go so the only difference would be maybe he'd go to Toyota you'd pay $80 for the plastic tray and that they have in the bottom or you can purchase a dual battery tray kit I had a look into these when we were purchasing on the past to do this the second battery and in that kit you get a battery tray which bolts into the bottom here I think it maybe secures into a captive nut up here somewhere and this air conditioning hose here this is going to be in the way a little bit there's actually a bracket for that that mounts where the battery goes so that battery tray kit comes with something to relocate that but it's a touch on a 300 bucks so what my old man's gonna do is knock up his own battery tray for today we're just gonna sit up down on that platform there and clamp it in place and in the future he's going to knock up something with the world or in a bit of plate metal so that's where the battery goes and now you've got to put in some consideration to where the charger goes so what have we got in this kit got some destructions the charger itself all bound up in this piece of cardboard let's get rid of that a little bit a heat shrink and some cable joiners they might come in handy a couple of table tires that's about it [Music] [Applause] oops that's gone forever I briefly considered putting it behind the headlight there it would have good airflow it'll be a pain in the arse if you ever wanted to change your headlight globes but instead I've opted to go behind the airbox it's still nice and close to the battery batteries just here you want to try and minimize that cable run to get rid of any voltage drop that might occur behind the airbox here there's a bit of a plate and it's got two eight mil studs poking up so what I can do is I can get some sheet metal and knock up just a little right angle bracket bolt that down into the car and we'll have the charger sitting right there I know some of you are going to be looking at this thing and go why put this $400 charger under your bonnet when you can put a hundred dollar isolator switch and do the same thing well it's not that simple anymore if you own GQ patrol GU patrol 80 series anything older than or maybe 2008 2010 you're fine you can go ahead use your isolator for under the bonnet once you start getting past that vehicles introduce things like variable voltage alternators and temperature compensated alternators all that sort of thing and what they do it's mostly an emissions thing right they cut down the voltage if your battery doesn't need charge and that's a problem because it might read that your main battery is all charged and good cuts down that voltage doesn't supply enough to charge a second battery so your second battery is getting like 50 percent charge at best and at last a year before it dies from being under charged so this being a 2014 150 series prado has one of these special alternators you need this now if you're doing a battery installation up the back of your car like I've got in my patrol third and fourth batteries or you've got a dual cab you or something like that you've got batteries in the back you also need one of these because if you use one of isolators you get voltage drop so you might have a healthy 14 point 4 volts up at your your main battery by the time it gets to the cable run down the back of your car is dropped to like let's say twelve point nine volts that's a healthy voltage to run your accessories not a healthy voltage to charge a battery so same deal your battery's gonna suffer in the long time these things compensate for all of that on top of that it deals with different battery chemistries so flip it around look at the front here jell AGM wet or calcium this one doesn't do lithium you've gotta buy a very expensive charger to do new lithium batteries [Music] [Applause] [Music] the projector instructions call for eight mill power cable well that there is eight mill twin core always keep yourself a lucky bits box like what I've got this is actually an off cut from the camper build so twin chief I'm just going to cut the sheathing off it and just use the positive wire from in there that's all I need and this part is where we are making the power run from the main battery over to the charger got a maxi fuse here 50 amps is what the instructions call for you can use a circuit breaker or a fuse he's opted to go for maxi fuse because you can just pop it open and see if it's blowing where a circuit breakers there a bit of a different technology that's just old simple big old fuse so you're gonna put a terminal on one end of that connect it to the positive terminal probably going to solder I think solder the red cable onto there use lots of conduit run it across to the other side quick soldiering lesson that's 100 watt iron I've got there I would not recommend less than probably 80 watts and tip to soldering is to crank it full of heat not enough to damage things but enough to melt the solder what I'm doing there I'm tinning the tip of the soldering iron as you can see it's a pretty damn old tip and then press lightly into your join let the heat flow now what should happen is as you poke that solder in fall right in the face it just flows into the join see that it's a nice hot solder join if it turns out to be a cold solder join the solder will just sit in like little bubbles on the surface that's not what you want this is just flowing all the way through the join see how easy that solder wires just pushing in soldering wire I'm using is probably a little bit too thin so it's just gobbling it up real quick that there is a beautiful solder joint its flowed all the way through nice haste when it comes to solder joins you've got to protect them because moisture will get in that if you don't and it'll corrode the connection and then you start getting electrical gremlins nobody likes them so because the charger came with a little bit of heat shrink I'm using that just slip heat shrink over the joint if you don't have heat shrink or you've got to slip the heat shrink over the cables before you soldered them a bit of electrical tape is better than nothing and then to melt heat shrink you can use a lighter if you like it just leaves black stuff all over it I've got a heat gun so why not whoo that's warm all right I've got to get that on there now but the problem is way too small of a gauge so it's perfectly acceptable to bend that over and because a proper pair of crimps to cream something that big is like a multi-hundred dollar investment ergo flat as a tack mate and then just to make sure it's really secured tighten up a bit law again and there you go it's crimped on there it's not as pretty as what would be done by a professional set of crimpers but it's nice and tight and that's what really matters there you go that's all wrapped up in conduit all soldered up all well-protected it's ready to connect to the battery make sure you leave the fuse holder empty at the moment otherwise there could be death and fire and explosions maybe not because the fuse would actually save you from that but you don't need a fuse now anyway although it's protected in conduit so the cables not gonna rub through you still want to try and protect that as much as possible better safe than sorry Hey so all the way along cable ties let's go [Music] time to talk about this Anderson plug now what do we use the Anderson plug for they're pretty much for trailers exclusively for trailers so off-road campers and all of that sort of thing with house batteries in them they have their own charger in them at least if it's done properly they do our one has a red arc 20 M DC to beast and charger basically the same principle as this projector charger we're putting in helps piece to map the voltage drop over that massive run between the front of the car and a trailer so this is literally just two high amperage wires that are going to go from the main battery all the way back through to an Anderson plug at the back we bought this thing from super cheap order called the ridge Rider dual battery extension kit and here's what we've got we did the maths and it worked out cheaper to buy this 7 meter long cable with Anderson plugs on both ends than it was gonna be to buy the cable in a different lengths and then by Anderson plugs to go on the ends as well so the plan is to cut one of these anderson plugs off put two ring terminals on the wires that are left and put this fuse in there as well if you're not sure about fuses always start lower rather than go higher because say that's capable of carrying 60 amps you're not sure you put a hundred amp fuse in there your fuse stays fine doesn't blow your wire melts and starts to fire anyway so always start with a lower fuse there it is run up to the front and what you do when you're doing a cable run along the bottom of a vehicle try and tie it along existing wiring looms brake lines if you can find them and failing all of that you can go sometimes through the holes in the chassis it's a bit tricky it probably took me about half an hour but you want to get it nice and tight so it's not gonna wriggle around and cut through now I've got all this extra length remember it's a twin core cable so I want to come across to the negative terminal here and to cut it at a length where it's still gonna reach there just pull that conduit back for a moment and then you want to pull away the outer sheathing so now you've got two bare wires we can cut this red one off back to a length that suits the positive terminal this one here we can put a ring terminal on go straight to the battery now we've still got a solder on our fuse holder as well [Music] now that the Anderson plug is all in and connected finally the brackets all done and dried up ready to mount that charger over there so let's go back over that side dig back into the more complicated fun bit to make access easier here I've pulled the airbox out two minute job unless you need a 10 mil socket then as a 20 minute job because no one ever knows where that is when you're doing wiring like this and you want to keep it neat try and think about how many cable runs you're doing so for example this one here has to connect to the charger there now if I cut this piece of conduit off a bit back further and put a thicker bit on there I can run another cable along there to go up to the battery I can also run without there that temperature sensing wire to the same bit of conduit and instead of having what looks like a bunch of three different wires crammed up in here I'm just gonna have one nice big thick piece of conduit it's going to look really neat [Music] so I mentioned earlier we need to connect the blue wire to an ignition pickup so if you connect this ignition wire to an ignition feed something that is live only when your ignition is on turning the different on will activate the charger turn the ignition off you won't drain your battery overnight sorry about his banging that's that's dad making up the bracket to mount this now you don't have to do it if you don't have a brand new alternator with variable voltage but it's not going to do any harm in actually doing it it's just going to make sure this thing's only charging when the vehicles running so I'll show you quickly how to find that feed here I've got my snap-on test light the only piece of snap-on equipment I own cost me 60 maybe 70 bucks when you can probably pay ten dollars for a test light but I needed to only some snap-on and that's it now all you need to do is connect this to a suitable earth point because I don't have this new battery hooked up yet to an earth just anywhere on the body should do and to test it you can just tap it on your battery terminal again that's not going to do anything because this isn't hooked up tap out on your battery terminal to make sure it's lighting up and that means you've got a grass now we've got to go in the car switch the ignition on and now you just start stabbing away at your wiring like it's been talking bad about your mother Oh see that that's a lit up already on that blue wire there so I have no idea what this piece if the wiring room does but poke this in and I get red on my test light now to make sure that is ignition switched we get someone to go in turn the ignition on and off and this should come on and off with it if that's the case that's our wire to hook into look I made another one of these it's exactly the same as the one that runs from the main battery just a terminal on this end big fuse holder here hold it up in the middle there and then this end here we'll be going to the output wire on our charger [Music] okay let's go over this one more time what I've hooked up here say external LED don't need that we'll just take that up in the Loom the green one there that's the solar power in not using the solar power feature on this charger at the moment so we'll just take that one into the loom which leaves us the blue wire just down there that's hooked up into our ignition feed this red one here alternator in so that's the wire that's coming from our main battery positive into the charger Brown one here that's auxilary battery out so that's coming out of the charger through this red wire and off that way to the positive battery terminal on our second battery this black one here that is an earth for the charger and that goes to our auxilary second battery and then this little black wire here is the temperature sensor so that this charger can compensate as charging if the battery there gets too hot now that that's all done we're gonna tape all of this up and put some kanji around it nice and neat I found this pre-made battery at cable in Lian box of electrical bits and goodies so I'll just I'll end on the battery wrap it around other end onto my earth point down there to easy [Music] it's finally all wired up have a look at that how neat charger over there on this little bracket all the wires in this fat loom here then they go down that way got this big one here comes up to the negative then that one that goes across and up to the positive terminal so all that's left to do before I try this thing out is tighten down those two battery terminals wake a fuse in here and a fuse in the other side and then when we turn the car on we should see the proper lights come up on here so both the fuses are in now we've got to set this charger default setting there you go is AGM we have a wet battery so on the projector charge you hold that mode button for four seconds things start flashing skip across to wet there and then you let it go and that's programmed it for a wet cell battery a battery's resting voltage is about twelve point nine volts so by hooking up a multimeter we can see if it's charging on a fourteen point seven two volts healthy charge so there you go the 150 Prado has got a second battery now really these advanced charges aren't as bad as they look they're a little bit scary maybe for those of us that are used to the the big old solenoid with two wires going in but you give yourself enough time make sure you take your time with your wiring keep flipping through the instruction manual and they're not so bad and it's going to give you way better charge in your battery and extend your battery life and of course work with these modern charging systems then we've got the Andersen plug over there even easier again anybody can do that for the sake of a fuse a little bit of wiring and some anderson plugs and we're just finishing off the plug down the back so thanks for watching backyard mechanics I hope you found it informative and if you want to learn some more stuff about wiring we'll be going through this with a twelve volt socket to power the angle later down the track that's another nice easy job it'll make for a good bit of footage for you we'll see you next time on backyard mechanic

Channel: Intents

Views: 59,757

Keywords: how to install house batteries, how to install second battery, four wheel drive batteries, batteries for overlanding, dual battery setup, built not bought, dc to dc charger, dual battery system, how to, how to install second battery in car, dual battery system explained, intents offroad, ronny dahl youtube, 4wd action

Id: 58m43KfbFBY

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018