Wiring 12V Outlets In our Ford Transit DIY Campervan (Full Tutorial)

hey everybody it's nate and seth from explorers.life we teach people how to build diy campers welcome back to episode number 14 in our ford transit camper van build series in last week's video we installed our usb outlets all around the van and in this week's video we're going to be installing our 12 volt dc outlets so let's get started [Music] here's a list of parts that you're going to need for this project some 12 volt outlets some spade connectors two conductor and three conductor lever nuts some wire a source of power and some assorted electrical tools like we've talked about in some previous videos this video is based on the diagrams found in the explorers live 12-volt branch circuit guidebook we've also assembled a 12-volt outlet wiring kit with all the exact parts that we used in this video as well as a few alternative sizes which can be found at shop.explores.life so let's talk about how we are going to wire these 12 volt outlets that we have here to our fuse block that is already connected to our battery bank so we have our battery bank which is effectively just one battleborn battery for tabletop demonstration here connected positive terminal to the positive terminal of the fuse block negative terminal to the negative bus bar of the fuse block and there are no fuses in the front side of the fuse block so there is no power to any of these positive terminals on this side for our 12 volt outlets that we have here just pretty typical 12 volt outlet with a positive and negative connector on the back side of that that we will be connecting to and we have three that we're going to be connecting all three of these so you can see how a multi-outlet circuit looks but we're just going to start off with doing just one so let's get started with that so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to cut off a bit of wire we would be cutting off enough wire to get from the fuse block to the first uh first 12 volt outlet which in this tabletop demonstration is only about a foot but in a van it would be significantly longer cut those get those out of the way and then we're going to strip about a quarter to a half inch of insulation off of each of these wires so we're going to take these two wires that we just cut and we're going to connect them to the back of the fuse block here so i'm going to take my negative wire and connect it to my negative bus bar and then my positive wire to the positive terminal on this side of the fuse block here now remember we have taken the fuse out of the front so there's no power to any of this on this side here but if you're nervous about what is and is not powered you can always disconnect it from the battery as well okay so now that we have the positive and negative wires coming off of the fuse block i want to make a special mention that this wire if we're doing it permanently we'd probably want this wire to go on the inside here so that everything lines up nice and neat down this channel but for tabletop demonstration purposes i'm putting on over here so it's just easier to see also you can use ferrules but i'm not using ferrules on any of these because whenever we move into the van and we start using 10 gauge wire on some of this stuff 10 gauge wire does fit in these terminals but not when you use a ferrule so i'm not using a ferrule because it's feral is ultimately a tool and not a requirement and it doesn't make our life easier in this case the next thing to do is connect our lever nuts to the wires that we just connected to the fuse block as well as the back of the 12 volt outlet here now we're going to use lever nuts here so quick intro about lever nuts we talked about them last week but maybe you're new to the channel and first off welcome but we're using lever nuts instead of wire nuts here because these have a tendency to loosen as we drive down the road and everything like that you know these are typical in a house but houses aren't vibrating down the road and so we're not going to use these as these have a tendency to loosen cause issues and potentially heat up so throw those away and we're using these lever nuts and these two that i have here we've got some two conductor lever nuts and some three conductor lever nuts and the only difference there is how many wires they can hold and how these work is these little levers on the top they flip up and out of the way and we can put the wires inside there flip the levers back down to lock the wires in place and then all the wires are connected electrically through that little bar in the back right there so since this is just going to be connecting this wire to the wires that are going to the outlet here i'm going to use the two conductor lever nut both of those up put the wire in place put the lever back down same thing on the black wire flip the lever up put the wire in place flip the lever down and then we can look on the back side of these to visually inspect to make sure that there is no insulation between the actual wire and the little bus bar that's inside of the lever nut it all looks good there now to connect the lever nut to the back of the 12-volt outlet we need a little small jumper wire to go from spade connector to the lever nut so i'm going to make that right now i'm going to get some of this wire and cut off a short section two to three inches should be fine strip the insulation off of each end and then i'm going to connect a spade connector right here onto these two little wires i just made so that we can connect the spade connectors to these terminals here put the wire in the spade connector crimp it down same on the black one cramp it down and then these are heat shrink speed connectors so we're going to use our heat gun to shrink the heat shrink down around the spade connector [Music] now we have these little short jumper wires made with the spade connectors on the ends and then we can just push those onto the positive and negative connectors here on the back of the 12-volt outlet see if we can get a shine on there so you can see the positive one and the negative and that is pretty much on every 12 volt outlet so positive to red negative to black and then we just connect these to our lever nuts so connect black to the i'm sorry the red to the uh the positive lever nut there and the black to the negative lever nut here give that a visual inspection on the back make sure that there's no insulation between the wire and the bus bar in the back it should be good there nice tug everything seems nice and tight so we should have power to here as soon as we put the fuse back in place so i'm just going to put that fuse back in place and now we just want to test it so we've got a just a drone battery here and there's a little spot on this charger right up here where that'll light up uh if we have power so keep your eye on that see if it works so that light just came on so we have power to this charger and then our drone battery is going to start charging in just a second it usually takes a few minutes so we're not going to wait on it all we need to know is that we have power to this charger from here so this is how this would look if we were doing just a single 12 volt outlet in in the circuit but we are actually going to be doing multiple 12-volt outlets in the same circuit so i'm going to show you how to take this and wire it to the rest of these so to wire up these other two outlets we need a few more pieces of wire so we need the little pigtails to go to both of those connectors there for both of them and i went ahead and made those for the sake of sparing you some time but i made those in the exact same way that i did that so if you need to see how to make these just reverse the video a little bit so we also need the wires that go from this uh outlet to this outlet and from this outlet to this outlet and i went ahead and made those too also for the sake of saving a bit of time here so now that we have all these wires let's go ahead and connect them together negative to negative negative to negative positive to positive red to positive so that got red to positive black and negative red to positive black to negative and then since we're going from the first outlet here to the second outlet here we need another spot on this lever net so i'm going to replace the two conductor lever nut with a three conductor lever nut for both of these [Applause] and something we just realized uh we didn't have an issue here but we could have so be careful with this be sure to take the fuse out when you're working on this because that's a live power and we don't want to short anything out so fuse is out don't be like me and then we're going to make our next connections here so we're going to do positive wire red wire to the positive lever nut here black wire to the negative lever net here just like that and then on the next circuit down we're going to get another three conductor lever nut black wire in it next one for the red wire okay those are nice and secure now i can connect the next outlet to their respective spots on these lever nuts black and red respectively and now we have two outlets in the series so red from the red from the positive terminal of the fuse block negative bus bar positive negative positive negative positive and negative and positive negative here and we'll test it here in a second but we're just going to connect up the last one real quick in the same manner that we just did that one red wire to the positive lever right here just like so so we've got a complete circuit now so all of our red wires are connected to red terminals on all three of these circuits and so now everything is nice and neat we visually inspected the backs of the lever nuts all of our spade connectors are nice and tight so now we can put our fuse back in and give it a test back with our drone battery here remember we're looking for the light which is right there right there outlet number one green light comes on outlet number two green light comes on and outlet number three the green light comes on so this circuit is now complete and we have three outlets in this particular circuit but you know if you needed two outlets or four outlets or 30 outlets ultimately it can be wired in the same way the wire size and the fuse size just needs to be sized as appropriate for the entire circuit amperage so in your house this is this is very similar to like in your house let's say in your bedroom you've probably got an outlet on each side of the bed maybe on the other side of the wall and maybe on an adjacent wall and all those outlets are probably on the same circuit and you can't load all of the outlets up to their max capacity otherwise you'll blow the breaker for the entire bedroom this is the same the same thing we're only going to be pulling a max of 15 amps for this entire circuit which this is what the wire size will be based on for the circuit as well as the fuse size now that you kind of understand how this is all wired up on a tabletop demonstration we're going to move into the van and get that wired up and then circle back around and show you how we did it [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] now that this is all wired up we want to show you kind of how it's wired up so we have a 100 hour battleborn lithium battery right down here for you know temporary demonstration purposes that is wired to a fuse block right here and fuse block will actually end up permanently living right up here but for demonstration purposes it's just how we've got it for now these wires right here they're connected to the back of the fuse block will be connected to the back of fuse block once it actually is permanently mounted up there from there it goes through this wire loom the same wire loom that we wired our 12 volt usb outlets in in last week's video runs through this channel here over here over here down through this wire loom through this channel right down here out of the bottom of that pillar and steph's going to talk about that down there this wire run comes at the bottom and connects to the 12 volt outlet and then once we go through that i'm gonna test it as well now we have these connected to lever nuts here and then to a jumper to the spade connector on the back of the 12 volt outlet you could really put these spade connectors directly to the back of the outlet and omit these lever nuts however we went ahead and did this because we're not exactly sure where this is going to end up if it's going to be on this side or this side or over here and so we wanted to have that flexibility of just being able to take off that lever nut and move it around wherever we needed it to be let's go ahead and test this well that sucks fuse is in there uh this oh usb outlets um okay so we'll actually power up the right circuit this time around i think that'll make it work way better now that nate has the correct wires wired up let's try this again this is actually the only 12 volt outlet that we currently have planned in the van we may add some more later but for now we already have some usb outlets around the van and this one seems to be the only one that we are sure that we need so that is it that wraps up this project now that we've installed our 12-volt outlets it's time to move on to puck lights and that's coming up next so stay tuned now we hope you found this video helpful and if you did it would be awesome if you would share with somebody or a group who you think could use it leave any questions you got or new things you learned down in the comments section below and if this video inspired you to build something be sure to share your projects with us on instagram so that we can see and share your projects subscribe if you want to see more diy camper building tutorials and we will see in the next video

Channel: EXPLORIST life Mobile Marine & Off-Grid Electrical

Views: 61,623

Keywords: explorist, explorist life, explorist life electrical, explorist solar, explorist life wiring diagram, explorist.life, explorist life solar, explorist life blog, diy campervan, diy camper van, do it yourself, do it yourself camper van, how to, diy camper van tour, power outlet in car, power outlet wiring, 12v outlet install, 12v outlet in car, 12v outlet wiring, 12v outlet kit, 12V, campervan build, wiring tutorial, tutorial wiring

Id: _nGbtOH5Dk0

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022