12v Electrical power plant for our Troopy

The system we have chosen is going to power up the tiny house by 400W solar Panels all the time on the roof and fill up x2 200A Lithium batteries by the help of alternator charging while driving with its management system called manager 30, then fuse up and control all the outputs by another device called Distribution box and then monitor all your inputs and outputs/switches plus report your usages by a display monitor and Bluetooth connection to your phone app, obviously only Readarc components will not power up your house and you will need lots of other bits and pieces to make this power plant workable,

All other components to finish off our power plant system, we bought all from Narva, which is a very famous Australian brand and well known for their different electrical parts and lightings both in Australia and New Zealand, lots of marine grade switches and driving/working lights vastly are in used in New Zealand and lots of government road maintenance trucks and trailers or boats using Narva products for their heavy and hard core daily usages in NZ, their catalogue is very easy to use and browse and to help you to list and choose what you need in advance and what you will need for your setup designs, another important main reason to choose Narva: you will need to mount some electronic components which they will be on your vehicle outside or inside and on your cabinet walls etc … you will definitely need to drill lots of mounting holes for each single component to be able to install your switches or light bars etc.. if for any reason after years you face to replace something, then you have to be sure you will find same product again and again, otherwise you can imagine how frustrating will be for you to get exact same match of the broken component in the market to be able to install on a same hole for the replacement on an exact position and avoid any extra re-drilling, so to me was no brainer to choose the famous Narva, as they have a vast selection of the electrical components for any needs between their range and to find and replaceable hassle free and convenient to buy anytime again. Narva is in this game for decades and that was enough for me to trust their product for my build.

Then you will need all the required proper wire sizes, glands, cable lugs, heat shrinks ets … which you will see them on my installing pictures here on this post later on, I will try to explain step by step here to get familiar what I have used to complete my 12v system, hope you will find the tips here helpful for your future builds decisions, I tried to separate my build stages in below topics, then you can skip to your need much easier and specifically for your Troopy build it will make much easier to decide what you might need to do for each of your build stages.

I decided to place some extra switches on each important line of the provided above diagram from Redarc, the main one was to have a cutt of heavy duty 200A switch on the main positive line coming from the starter battery in the engine bay, then in any emergency or fault on the 12v Aux system you will be able to quickly isolate your new system from the factory setup and be able to drive to somewhere safe and fix the issue, this is one of the switches I have added extra, another one is on the solar lines coming from the roof which you will read about it below in the solar panel mounting section soon,

I had some leftover folded parts from my cabinet build, so I grinded off what I need, to mount the switch just after the starter battery, then strait to a 60A fuse provided by Redarc and from the fuse I run the main positive line of the system in the engine bay from right hand side (Battery side) to the very left hand side of the engine bay, as you see in the images you will have very good spot from the very left corner of the engine bay to run down your main positive wire by the front fender to under the side steps, the very interesting part of this run way is, you only use the preexisting drainage factory holes which Toyota already put under the side steps ( My driver side), then from there easy you will run both of your positive and negative wires back to the wagon interior cavity just behind my driver seat where my cabinet is seating for the electronic components and x2 200A batteries!! How cool and easy is that !! seems Toyota been thinking about this future modification for its users too !

As you see in the images here even you can use the rubber hole caps for your new wires too then cap off the access holes again! (just remember it to place caps on the wires before running them) I was stocked for this easy wiring run, without any need for extra single hole to drill on the body !!!

For the negative wire (Common Ground) you can easy find a very good steady bolt spot on left hand side of the engine bay, almost where the air box is seating, which is a factory common ground point already bolted there and you can use it for your main negative wire run from the left hand side of the engine bay again through same exit way at the corner in the fender, then go to the under side of the step again through the factory access holes, I placed the wire lug there but before, I marked its required seating surface area and sanded the paint to have much better connection to the body too, then easy bolt your negative lug on the pre existing body nut and place back the factory negative wires on top of your lug too, how clean and easy was this run!

Here we go, below you can see two red and black life saving exciting wires, came directly from the engine bay so neat and the story will began from here… 😉

As you see here Alucab roof comes with pre mounted grooved rails, but I don’t know why they didn’t extend their rails to the very front point of the roof and the rails suddenly stops about 600mm before reaching to the front edge, if you need to mount the solar panels on the roof and cover it almost to the front edge then you need to be able to have same mounting rails to the very front point, I asked Alucab and little argued about this important and finally they agreed to supply me extra rails to be able to mount my solar panels properly,

This will give you ample access on the roof to put x2 200W Redarc solar panels, they will be placed off center and also you will have good available area to mount shovel or other light stuff beside the panels too, also enough area on very back of the roof will be left available for mounting Maxtrax recovery boards, this way you almost used the whole roof surface efficiently and not wasted it for no reason.

Also very best point to place the solar glands is the very front side edge of the Alu kit, it should be close to the front hinge as the roof will hinge up from there and you will need to have interior surface side free to be able to mount extra gland under the solar wiring cover too(This will lock the wiring), rest of the side area on the vehicle not usable really at all and you will have double wall under the alu kit and gland back side nut could not be accessed at all, the point I’m showing in the image is a perfect spot to plan for your solar wire entrance, this point has good free nut access on the backside from inside the Troopy too, another important aspect to decide where to place your wire glands is drainablity in bad whether, specially when you drive towards the rain front face will heat all the time by rain heavily and not very good idea to place your gland at all, on the roof same concept too, rain will seat on flat surface and prone to get into the gland edges too, so side mount is the go as always will be drained naturally, I saw some people even placed bigger cover for two glands side by side for each positive and negative wires to enter separately which to me not necessary at all, you easy can use one entrance gland and only use two hole rubber for it to seal and to be able to pass two wires from one point, in the images I’m showing how you can use one rubber seal with two holes for both solar wires, you need M2 gland on the white cover with two holes rubber fixing, wires will enter to the interior by one another M16 (Black) gland (hidden under white cover) then into your living space to be able to properly lock the wires on the surface of your kit, Also I decided to have spring protected gland head shown in the pictures as the roof always popping up and down and is a good idea to protect wires from any movement damages,

So basically by one M16 black shown gland you will pass through the body and lock the wires on the body and by another spring protected Gland M20 on the white cover over your M16 gland you will cover the entrance hole and the wires will get out from your M20 spring protected gland to the solar panels just by a two hole rubber seal, these rubbers are easy to find in the market (M20 with x2 5.3mm holes for 10AWG wire gauges)

This way by only one simple setup you will run your solar wires so secure/protected and perfectly sealed from the whether, and at same time you only made one M16 hole on your kit and the opening of the roof will not be interrupted at all.

Have to add another good way to wire your solar panels into the wagon is to use your snorkel pipe and place your gland on the very top under the filter head, but this way you need to add extra wiring then to the engine bay from air box then back to the wagon, this way the extra wires will have little voltage drop too, is good idea for Troopy owners with factory roof but for me was not the case really and only one side proper sealed entrance as I explained will be perfect for my AluCab kit, in below image you see under the outer solar cover I have extra M20 black gland secured from inside too.

The choice for a proper mounting bar in the market is a lot, from different brands you can find good Aluminum bars but you need to investigate proper bolting on the AluCab rails, the best fit for this rails is Coachbolts M8x40 as shown in these images, the best choice for the mounting bars for me is specific type of extruded Aluminum rails which you need to find them between electrical suppliers, they called UniStrut, the size I have chosen is shown here but you are not really limited to this size really, I wanted a low profile product as much as possible then I bought two 6 meters lengths from their supplier, cut them to the roof width sizes and made 8 bars, three to use under each solar panel and two extra bars left for future Maxtrax recovery board mounting too, this way with very light weight bars and affordable low profile product you get all you will need really, not really necessary to go for any expensive option then they confuse you with bolting them down on the rails, the coach bolts will seat perfect on the Alu rails too then secured by proper washers and spring washer/nut will hold them all perfectly. the Unistrut got plastic caps which will finish your setup so neat as shown in the images.

Before final installation, I test fitted all the components on my designed cabinet to cut all main required wires to the final installing sizes on the ground first, tag named them all for installing them again later and after receiving the cabinet from powder coating, this stage was truly necessary as all the main wires should be sized and harnessed for the cabinet properly,

Later for final install this could save you from lots of frustrations, as you see in the photos two 200A batteries seating inside the right hand cabinet behind the driver seat, Shunt will be there on the wall panel also a negative bas bar will be on the lower cabinet too,

The manager 30 will seat on the wall panel and distributer on the third top cabinet module behind the drivers seat,1000W Inverter just behind the driver seat outside of the cabinet too, in the images you can get very good idea how I designed the cabinet to be able to mount all the red arc system perfectly,

(Also I will upload final installation video of the electrical system here later to get idea where exactly all the parts will seat)

The first test run of the system was pretty sweet and good, also I checked my custom made switch panel too, the system will not show any percentage till first full cycle charging of the batteries finishes by the system, for this you need to plug manager 30 to AC shore power wait for about 12-14 hours then system will show you the right readings, you need mobile app to program all the input and out put channels, if your your mobile not detected by the Redarc Bluetooth , just try with another available mobile phone, you need to install both Redvision software also Configurator to be able to fully program and operate the system,

I will not get to this detail here as the red arc guides could give you all the details too.

Despite the system could be monitored by the Read arc display but I’m sure it will not be enough for all requirements and you might need extra set of manual switch panels to operate the system perfectly, after a little brain storming and writing all the needs on paper finally I ended up to make below switch panel which will make more handy option for controlling your equipment along side of the display from Read arc, I run some of the equipment only into red arc but some others into the switch panel too, Im not getting to more detail of this design as different people might have different devices and needs.

Here you see after placing the wall panels which they came from powder coating, final wires are ready in place for cabinet installation, from rear you will have access to AusJ wires/Tubes and also webasto heater supplied harness run from other left hand side to this right hand cavity by access from rear roof edge cavity for extending it to the front, the top image also showing a handmade bracket to install a solar blanket Anderson plug under the Troopy, its wire will run from underbody to the rear cavity drain hole then directly inside and then you run it to the front cavity access for the RedArc components connection.