Inergy Apex installed in my Intech Pursue.

hey how's it going I'm Nate this is dusty trail my dusty trail we're gonna talk about various camping hiking and just getting out and seeing nature things and we're gonna start with basically modifications to my in tech pursuit trailer and the first one we're gonna do is we're gonna mount this energy apex now why I went with the energy apex is because of its size its lightweight only 25 pounds and it's it's not very big 14 inches wide it's eight inches tall and seven inches in depth and that's really important because when you see the space that I'm planning on installing inside of the side of the enttec there's just not a lot of room available this is battery's gonna fit that space better than other batteries that are on the market plus the price not terrible not at all very competitive with other with other brands better better priced in a way then some of your assuming your larger brands that are out there now in order to install it what we're going to need to do is we're gonna need to change the way that short power hooks up to the trailer right now you take a female end cable and plug it into a male and port on the outside of the trailer that is directly wired up to a controller to the power controller instead what we're gonna do is we're gonna break that connection we're gonna wire in some 300 volt 10 gauge rubber rubber insulated wire that is gonna go directly to its own plug this plug will have the ability to either plug into the energy or a wire in another outlet that will wire to the original Shore power plug so that's how we're gonna do it but before we get started we got to get the old battery out of the way so I've already started to remove the battery a little bit what you see here is this is the plastic box that comes with the in tech pursue this metal that you see right here that's the back side to our fridge there's a little slide out on the other side and this is all the space that I'm dealing with here this is uh this is it right there's the power controller this is the this is the main short power that's coming in it goes up and around down to the short power input right here this guy right here if we come out and around the trailer you'll see that's what I was talking about just a standard just a standard short power input and it's really nice when a trailer this size has this kind of power because of the fact that you don't necessarily want to put a big cable in here and then have to leave a door up and when you go to show when you go to short power a lot of times the the bigger rigs will have that where the where the short power cable is wired straight into it but not not these smaller trailers and that's a good thing this box has a vent because it's a let acid better you have to vent them that vent goes right here I have a plan I have a plan for this vent I'm gonna leave it alone for now but there's there were four screws I popped those off the the top will come off just like this I've already loosened up the negative always loosened negatives on batteries first take the negative off make it so that there's no so there's no positive negative and then you've completely isolated the trailer has no power on it whatsoever so it's gonna make doing the wiring on this incredibly easy but we're gonna get started all put this back on the tripod so you have to deal with Blair which shaky crap and we'll get this battery out of here we'll get this table out of here there is another there is another vent underneath kind of see it right there that hole is gonna be used later I hope for a different install on something else that will help my wife and I stay warm during during nice cold winter camping trips which in in sunny California we don't you wouldn't think two days ago November it was 90 thanks Santa Ana for nothing but um you can go up to like Big Bear and actually see snow around here it's kind of it's kind of crazy so we're gonna we're gonna get this going alright alright to get this battery out of here you really only need it crescent wrench screwdriver you could probably find the actual size for these posts but I'm lazy and they're not on there all that tight nor should they be um tops off no problem comes out and just get a little hole there for this Beckett it's actually stuck on everything I think this is all part of part of that that vent but you know I'll get to that and I'll figure out what I'm gonna do with with that here in a bit the important part is this right here as long as you don't touch the the positive and negative side with with something on bridge that gap you're fine there's the screw will pop the positive battery connection and then this cable right here the smaller cable right here with the fuse that's actually from the solar charger we're going to use that for the for the energy because the energy can be charged solar obviously a lot of times those generators are called solar generators battery generators there's a bunch of different ones so just carefully take the cable out of there and then this battery's heavy light acid batteries are very heavy and out it comes not about too shabby um one of the things that I'm looking in here knowing right now that I'm gonna need to go grab is there's a screwdriver I'm gonna move the camera all clumsy like I'm sure you've got Phillips head screwdrivers that are holding this holding this down and you've got two screws that are holding that holding that bottom you know probably it's probably because so these these batteries are let acid style and you have to pop these caps off and fill these batteries everyone's all they have to be there's maintenance has to happen with them and I'm I'm not bad with maintenance but why do maintenance if you don't have to and the energy the energy battery that's in this it's self-contained you don't have to do any maintenance it doesn't have to be vented it's just it's just a way better battery and the fact that it will easily provide as much power as that interstate or more and it's only 25 pounds yeah is a no-brainer folks the other thing that it's gonna do for me is this right here everything like this side over that's that's all a pure sine wave inverter built into the box if not you have to wire all that in yourself that's kind of hard to do plus it it tells you what's going on with it you know like it tells you and that 95% 96% by the way that's because I have it right now set to just the DC ports if I go over and I turn on the inverter it's gonna show me a little bit less probably in a moment when it when it gets the inverter going but even if it doesn't which I'm kind of surprised it doesn't just the testament how cool it is this is after we boiled some water in a 700 watt water kettle so I had this 100% like three days ago boiled boiled water and I'm at 95 96 wherever it wants to be hovering in between now one of the reasons why we said we were going to use the the solar this is my one complaint and it's not even really it's not even really a complaint on in tech it's a complaint that this is an EC 8 port and there I've got ec 8 plugs that I'm gonna have to solder into the trailer and I tried to like kind of put one together yeah you can only buy them in like 5 packs they're not very expensive at all but they're they are really hard to put together you know if they'd had gone with on the outside of my trailer there's this zamp plug right here and it's just a standard SAE port or whatever and you'll exam thinks that they like do something funny when they reverse the polarity of this thing so that way this guy right here this the bottom guys your positive and the top guys your negative so that are all the way around sorry this guy's your positive and the reason being is that way this is protected the positive is protected with a shield and the negative is just the prong that sticks out whatever zamp you're charging too much money for your products I'm sorry man I'm sorry they're not bad products by any stretch of the imagination they're just they're just really expensive and they're not as proprietary as you'd think but that is kind of a plus for zamp because as long as you understand that zamp is trying to do this backwards thing which is which is good for safety then you know you can adapt whatever you want to him so it's so in a way you know not that terrible alright I'm just I'm not gonna pay for your briefcase panels at four hundred dollars for like a hundred watts sorry but anyway so that's this is the one thing the the reason they do this though is that like these ec8 cables are capable of a lot of power a lot more than than your standard cables your standard connections so you know so we'll get that together I'll figure it out I mean where there's a will there's a way but anyway so that's that's a little bit more on why this is going in this trailer this will fit in here really nicely and I'm like I said I have a plan for something else here that's gonna sit at about five to six inches high anyway I'm actually going to be building a box in here to surround that item and when I get that item in I'll be filming that install it's gonna be a very it's gonna be a pretty intense install I'll be cutting holes in the floor and we're gonna have to figure out you know this guy right here and everything but then then the the goal is the the the energy is gonna sit like right up here and it should be able to nicely even with even with all those plugs up there so let's get the box out of here and let's start working on the wiring situation because now now the real fun begins so for those who are working on mastering the art of being lazy electric screwdrivers are the best especially for tight jobs like this like no effort no one fit it all comes right on out these are self tapping screws kind of interesting they're actually really handy to have and these are in really good shape so probably clean them up keep them around check the check the ends you probably can't see it on the camera but if these things get get marred at all just throw them away they're not that expensive and you don't want to be messing with the screw that you put in wrong and need to take out and know the now the end screw funny tango I guess but these are in good shape they're nice and long and they're self tapping handy to have I'm a I'm a also if there's somebody on it if so many I'm one of the in tech websites needs this box for whatever reason or wants this box for whatever reason probably like this one this one in the end might be screwed up because I there's there's like plastic bag yeah you can see that it's kind of round it a little bit just throw it away it's not worth it there's two more that I got to get that go through the hole to hold the bottom ventilation on it disappear well those two are below the flooring but above the subfloor so getting them out could be oh never mind so the way this is gonna work talks is I'm interested I'm gonna have to give this a nice big tug because what they did don't see if I can show you is they put they put that in there like that now that's only screwing this uh that's only screwing this black this stuff this stuff on but what it's what it's doing let's see if I can I'm gonna pop the editor cool kinda alright that camera work but whatever so if you can look underneath here once you figure so out of focus again oh come on crying out loud there we go see it's screwed in just to the just to the tub but what they did they put a bunch of gunk around it so I'm gonna work on getting that gunk out and see if I can't get it out okay what I ended up doing is I just ended up pushing it through on the bottom while pulling it up top kind of kind of muscled it through it broke a little bit on this side so it kind of separated from the from the tank but again I'm not using it I don't need to use it I don't need to vent anymore so you can see it just I'll flick the floors it's kind of nice and you can see the you know the weird like rubber insulation or plastic stuff that they put around it now you can't leave this like this so no matter what I do I cannot leave this like this because that wood will rot and moisture will get will get caught in there so my plan I'm a pro I'm gonna end up cutting cutting more of a hole than what exists anyway but when I get done doing that and I cut all this out here to to mount the the next big upgrade then what will occur is I will have to get some of the goop that I was talking about some of this some of this plastic you know putty stuff to seal it you know I'll put it around the outside I doubt I'll put it around the inside I'm not quite sure why I guess I guess for the battery purposes they don't want any the battery acid accidentally getting in to the to the what if it had leaked out but for me I'm not going to need to do anything more than just the outside for them for the next item that's gonna sit in this lower area but the first item that's gonna sit in this lower area is gonna be the the intech in it in California can sit with that hole open I'm not too concerned about water coming in it hasn't rained here since June and even if it did rain it's it's not gonna rain up on the bottom and this trailer is not going to move until after I get the rest of this install done so at this point at this point we are ready to cut our wire here and start working on the install of our new of our new socket that is going to go in here our new a new plug that'll be probably be up here somewhere probably install it up here on the wall and then and then we're gonna remove this right here oops that right there because that's that's your short power that's your short power right there and then we're also going to figure out so this this is your battery this is a battery this is a battery fuse you can turn off the battery I I'm probably just gonna remove all that because it's a way for you to isolate a battery I'm no longer setting up to do any of that stuff like I'm not never gonna use this thing I'm that I'm not I'm not even charging my battery through the normal means I'm charging it through I'm charging it through solar and solar it's gonna come down through here and unless they've merged the solar and I'm not quite sure that I saw it to go through and trace all my cables unless they merge the soul or and this is the solar by the way this black cable in this red cable and maybe they did to be honest with you and maybe I will leave this switch so that way I can leave it in the off position and then turn it on after after all the solar sucked up we'll see we'll see it doesn't look like it though no to be honest with you it looks like looks like this cable the white and red down here the one that's going straight through it that looks like it's my solar just because of the fact that it's got a fuse right here and there's no reason there's literally no reason to put like a fuse in this line if it's coming from the controller because the controller is fused there's there's a 30 amp fuse in there and a couple of 15 M fuses so hmm well I'll figure it out I'll let you know so this is what the Intex controller looks like what you see here are your standard 30 amp fuse for the Maine Shore power 20 amp fuse this is undoubtedly going to the air conditioner yep and then you've got your your your receipts your receptacles and then you've got your standard your converter so the converter is basically the converters ability to change it over to DC Watts now if I was getting really crazy you I could actually wire everything into the to the energy I could I could theoretically remove all of this stuff and why are all of these things into the energy and then if I didn't want to use any of these other items I could just I could not run my inverter the reason why you might want to do that is because running the inverter is is gonna drain the power faster then um then if you don't run the inverter but that's a lot of work and this converters handy it does all that for you so I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it I'm gonna let it run the way it normally would but I do have to figure out how to get this off the the box so that way I can get to the plug the 30 amp and and take the wires out and that way I can wire in the new extension cable and the reason why you want to wire that rubber that rubber-coated thicker stuff is because it's going to move around a lot more that you're gonna you know you're gonna plug it into this to the standard short power you're gonna plug it into the energy it's gonna move around and your standard I think it's 12 2 or whatever that in the wall cable the yellow cable that you see in there that stuff is not meant to move around like you put it in you'll leave it alone I'm pretty sure that the more you move it around the more the insulation breaks down and during install that's fine you know you're not moving it that much but if you were to continually move it around on a fairly regular basis it's just not meant for that it's just it's not set up to do that so you know do the right thing replace it you don't want to fire you're in a very confined space you know I guess I give you a tour of this bad boy that's it you know it's it's a bed it's it's a bed it's got a nice little max fan um it's got an AC unit with a heat strip that we never use because you know it's too too too much power consumption it's a very lightweight trailer Bailey's very small I put a put a futon frame in there it's got two two mattresses for now probably get a futon mattress eventually but it serves our purpose as well we go camping to go outside I just I hate putting away wet tents and this is going to make it so I don't have to put away wet tent and it's super comfy and I can also heat it efficiently so let's get to going on this and I'm sure you'll get more tours of this camper as it becomes relevant so one of the one of the kind of crazy things that my wife and I discovered last time we were in Big Bear is that once the temperature gets cold enough these foam pads they get really uncomfortable it's they get rock hard and it's uh it's it's kind of its kind of pain to try and get him warmed up and get comfy on them no I am I'm kind of guessing here on how to get this thing out of here and there we have it that was easy and you know what else is gonna be really easy let's see if I can grab this up and show you so those are terminals down here and what you're looking at is this right here so thick that is that's your that's your short power you got your your ground usually green I'm gonna look all this up though google everything check your math twice three times and then you got your actual cable going into your 30 amp plug right here um and chances are good if I pop this out of the way right there I should be able to I should be able to pull that breaker right out what you make wiring up the new cable a lot easier all right so I'm kind of I'm kind of laying where my feet were pretty uncomfortable I wanted to get this for you so this this guy right here that's your short power has to because it's going into the 30 see that tip bar way back there okay that guy's got to come out of there and then I can get the short power out and then I can wire in the exact same way you see here I can wear in that new cable okay three cables yeah you're positive you're neutral and your ground it's them that's the copper looking one they are all copper but this one's a solid and I will go and I will wire the new cable up exactly the same way so that way it is identical and what site once I take and loosen all these wires up I'll go back into the other side and when will you send up the cable and I'll just be able to pull it right through and then put the other cable in there should be should be really easy it is a is what I told myself all right it worked so now I get to go in there and disconnect the other one but before I do that I'm gonna come out I'm gonna get my my other cable because I need to have a plan of attack and then the other thing that I definitely just realized is that that opening that will easily let that fin yellow cable out of there is probably not gonna be big enough before why I want this energy thing man guys guys just get just get the apex don't think about it just do it it seems so awesome anyway this thing is way bigger it's got the rubber coating on the outside it does have my my three cables it's got the ground the neutral and the black is the positive and you know so it's way bigger so hopefully come on craftsman a little tiny screwdriver dude don't let me down we're gonna have to fit something in there and get that thing spread out as much as we can to get this cable through there because that insulation needs to be you know that clamp needs to be on this insulation these these wires they can be inside the controller they're protected in there as long as there's no metal showing you're good to go especially on that black cable that that guy that that little third guy he can't have any mouths showing because that's your third as your actual that's your positive you know want to have that that arc and sparking I'd be a bad day but for the rest of this be careful too either way what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go in the garage I'm gonna I'm gonna carefully strip a little bit of this this plastic down a little bit of the rubber down and then and then I've got a stripper tool for the smaller for the smaller cables those 10 gauge just fine so we're gonna get that taken care of probably an exacto knife you know so if you don't hear from me again for a while even though it's the magic of YouTube it's because I cut myself don't do that you know wear eye protection that kind of thing but then all the rest of this is gonna wait all the rest of this stuff is just it's going to wait until after I tell her I get this done because all that stuff that's this end see the difference this one's going to the trailer right this one it's going to that one cool all right we're good so I cut my extra off and now it's a lot more manageable I have it in there the way this works is this little kit came with two of these two of these little connectors and then two of these plugs and you just plug in everything so that way the cables going through just the bottom and then how I'm gonna have that set it's gonna go right up there like like that so it'll be a lot neater straight when I get done but I need to wire in the plug that's this guy and it's really nice it tells you you know tells you green and even puts a little green stamp on it and white no white stamp and then I imagine that the third one is black they didn't say that but you know I've only got three more cables so I've only got three cables so and then over top of it not needed at all probably could have saved my money but it'll look neat it'll look clean it'll keep will keep things from sticking their fingers or hands or anything up there and when you can't see it when you can't like when you just may be feeling around in the dark you don't want you don't want it exposed you know you just don't want exposed so you know I wouldn't say plug in your short power before you plug in your internal short power but I'm not gonna be the only one using this trailer so we keep going I am planning on to install to install this I'm planning on just reusing some of the battery screws they're the exact same size screws and type screws that I pulled out of the little holders that hold the cables on so I know they're not going to go through the I know they're not going to through the outside of the of the camper and why why get more screws there's no point okay I'll get started and I'll show you the progress as we go okay so and you can't see it cool right yeah all right now the next thing I have to do is I need to take my my cable my way to long black cable and I need to build in the plug and the plug comes like this and you you literally build it yourself and so that's the cable will go in there like that when I get all the parts out but here's the deal it's too it's too long right now it's unwieldy I'm gonna I'm gonna set the in tech thing in there but you can see that like I have all this cable I'm gonna set the intech battery in here and like just basically call it like worst case you know what if I what if I needed to plug in this wall you know at the very bottom even though I plan on having it sit up like six inches or so worst case scenario how long do I need this thing to be not as long as it is so I'm gonna get that done I'm gonna cut it I'm gonna strip it same as I did when we when we plugged it in the controller and then I will try to set up the tripod so you can see me fumble around with this thing because it's probably gonna be funny and maybe it won't be maybe I'll get it right the first time but I doubt it if I have to solder anything it will be a mess and that will be funny for everyone but me and the reason the lights in here is because right before or right after I got this done before I could bother to film the fact that I got it done my my wife came home and said let's go to the movies so he went to the movies cuz she said let's go to the movies so might be doing a little bit of this in the dark but once I get this plug done I probably gonna well I am gonna take care of this I'm gonna get I literally get all of this out of here I don't need two of the four cables that are in here and the other two are solar we'll deal with those later and then I can just literally put instead of three cables coming out of I think it's that that first little grouping right here instead of consider there being three there's only gonna be two so I actually have a very good solution for when two to two wires are coming to touch each other it's it's called heat shrink and in the you get this special kind has a little bit of solder in the center of it we're gonna give that we're gonna give it a shot it's used to get good reviews from people who know things but let's see what what I person who doesn't know anything thinks of it so that's where we're at I will get set up to to cut this and strip it and then get the camera back Rowan so you can watch me fumble around with the point tah-dah so I actually got it on the very next try that's it plugged into the shore power up there as if you were getting a regular shore power from you know from the post at your campsite and then alternatively you can you can one-handed pull it out pull it out and there she is and now I can plug it into my energy generator and this thing still the springs don't really like to plug all that much but they'll get over it okay okay so I'm back inside the battery compartment I've traced the wire like a bunch more times to make sure that it is absolutely the wire that I no longer need um because I really do not want to cut this thing unless I am absolutely sure because if not I'm gonna have to do it again but the key to my success there these little guys solder steel wire connectors what these do you can order on Amazon that's where I got mine what they do is they get everywhere if you don't if you're not careful when you open them they have these little metal tin centerpieces and you would really use a heat gun I don't have a reflective thing so I'm gonna do this tip where they strongly recommend I have one but I'm not just gonna rotate the wire but as you rotate the wire the heat shrink which is normal goes down but the so does the tin the tin melts and creates a solder for you so the first thing you do is you twist the wire I'm getting too close you twist the wire around each other like that that isn't not gonna hold at all if you were to pull they'd come right apart you then slide that over the top and start heating it that's when the glue and the solder are in the heat strips is gonna start to hold those wires in place a little bit but then the real the real goal is to see that right there where the metal melts and the reason I can do that is because I'm gonna be going from three wires together to two wires these two wires are gonna they're gonna one wire so I'm gonna do that right I'm not going to have the camera on because I'm not it's boring but I'll show you what happens and if I screw it up oh I'll show you that too so either way you win all right here goes nothing so that's the end product as you can see it it melted um it looks better on the video the night then I think it really is I'm not super thrilled with it I should have I probably should have grabbed another heat shrink just to put over top of it and and quick melt the other heat shrink on top of it I'll probably do that in the future just to double up on it I know it's not terrible um you know it's soldered in there that's for sure it's a good connection so that's good but um yeah I'm gonna keep playing with these and try to get better at them and then ain't like I said in the meantime I'll wrap this one in electrical tape and I'll uh I'll try to solder the other I'll try to I'll try to use another heat shrink over top of the next one so I'm gonna tuck this all up get this taped up and then we can get this get this tested all right it's time we're gonna plug it in and turn it on and we're gonna see what happens this plug is finicky there we go so it's in we're going to turn it on don't see any problems it's odd let's go see let's go see if I've got power hmm the radio should be on I lock the door the radio should be on so we may you may not have what we need that doesn't necessarily and there's two ways of neo the radio should be on there's no power we make sure I turn the inverter on and I didn't just turn the DC on because you can turn it just the DC on okay no I thought I'd turn well let's try the other way well there we go now it's telling me 28 watts see if I can get that close enough so you can see it 24 watts let's go see if I've got power in the rest of the trailer because remember the inverters got to be on for this to work all right but but it should power everything well no I still don't see the radio being on so that's that's kind of a problem nope I do not have power well first test it's not a success so we're gonna have to see what it is I did wrong and try to figure out where to go from here alright so as you guys will recall I was messing around with breakers if that's not in the up position none of this none of this whole trailer gets any power and that's fine you wanna know why it's okay that that happened because it gave me the opportunity to plug the cable in see power goes first the breaker and nothing bad happens so what's the cable is still plugged in let's let's try it one more time see if the radio comes on and 70 watts let's see what happens let's see it's always tough to remember no okay I can't remember if it's to the right or to the left that you're supposed to turn the switch on to get the inverter to power on I think it's the only way though I think it's to the right sort of beep heard a beep up there so I bet you we got it this time yeah and if you turn it to the right then the inverter turns on the fan turns on it's a good way to know if the fans not on you're gonna get any power let's take a look oh there she is there's the glow let's test some lights here folks oh yeah this is all on the battery all through my cable [Music] yep it lights out here everything is working which is really great so that is the battery the inverter everything is in there plugged in through a normal short power plug 30 amp I've got outlets I've got everything I need because it's coming in through the short power right here it's not hot cables not warm or anything like that although it's not really powering a whole lot if you look 33 watts is what it seems to think it's running right now but what we're going to do is we're going to turn this off for now all right so now that the trailer is dead we're going to unplug this they're not warm the prongs are not warm so that's good we're gonna unplug it and then you know I struggle to get this back in so I'm just gonna set you down while you're kind of looking at it okay maybe I don't know good enough to get a lot better at this probably should not have got the cover because as soon as the cover just gets in my way okay sorry the garage garage is a mess but I'm gonna grab my short power cable all 250 thousand feet of it and I'm gonna take it out because we are going to plug it in to the shore power so now the battery compartment is empty got it plugged in right up there we can't really see it totally understand we're gonna plug in the shore power so that it plugs into here should get my light so I can see what I'm doing I put it in the now dark trailer there we go sweet all right so we're gonna plug in the shore power and I'm gonna try not to get in my own way but all right you don't really get that screw this tight when you're just testing with doesn't take long and we're gonna take our other end here and we're gonna plug it into our energy apex okay so that's in there like that alright turn it on I heard the beep again let's see if we've got power oh yeah there she is there's the radio there's the light fan is on [Music] 1% max fan running okay well folks I'm gonna I'm gonna clean this up because I'm done that's the first episode of dusty trail it seems like we did a lot but we didn't we just we just took out an old blood acid battery and installed an apex energy really awesome piece of kit and the next one I will show you how to get solar panels onto under this trailer and then route it down with minimal with minimal wire work to get into any trailer through the samp outlet and into the apex so that way when we're on the road we can charge with the with the solar instead of having to plug into a regular charge port on the trailer when when we have short power because if you have short power you can just plug the apex into a regular outlet and charge it through the wall outlet that came with it but I don't want to do that I just want to charge it with solar keep it charged so as I go between Shore power and not having sort of power that generally speaking it's charged all the time so we'll do that next time thanks for joining me remember I like and subscribe I guess everybody says that I'll try not to say it too often because I don't care and check out the podcast if you want to hear more ramblings because I will definitely talk a lot about why we went with this trailer what we what we hope to achieve out of this and everything else so alright everybody playing a trail

Channel: Dusty Trail

Views: 2,463

Keywords: Intech, Pursue, Inergy, Apex, Solar, Off Grid, Boondocking, Camping, Battery Generator, Solar Power

Id: vnkra2QFNwo

Length: 43min 6sec (2586 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 11 2019