Jps190

I just finished getting the Solar panels put together and attached to the bed cover. Panels are attached together with 1/8 inch aluminum angle and 304 stainless bolts. After much research I decided to just build some mounts out of aluminum. Every time I got on the 8020 site I ended up with a 500-600 dollar rack and this is really the only thing that will travel on the bed cover. I bought an SOK 100 AH battery that will be fed by these panels to run my ICECO fridge/freezer in the truck bed. The battery has bluetooth and a built in heater and is very well made. $630 direct from SOK. The panels are 100 watt 9BB panels from BougeRV. Testing them in the driveway here south of Atlanta I was getting some pretty impressive yields. They are wired in series and feed a Victron 100/30 MPPT SCC. I am going to connect the panels to the charge controller through some Anderson Powerpole connectors. By doing this it will be easy to disconnect from the victron in the truck and connect these to soon to be installed victron MPPT in the Oliver. Since they are run in series and put out plenty of voltage and I can park the truck in the sun and not need a large gauge wire on the run to the trailer. John

Here is a picture of mine. Oliver installed it for me at pickup. Ran the cable from the tongue, under the trailer the up through the top of the spare tire cover. The have the cable come through a little chrome piece. The excess cable is in the bumper compartment. John

I would not want to have thousands of dollars worth of lithium batteries sitting on the tongue of the trailer. IMHO...

I have one and I love it. Makes the truck bed like a vault. If I have to haul something large I can remove the whole thing in about 5 minutes. I'm currently working out a plan to install a mount for a removable solar panel on the back panel to charge a battery in the truck bed to power my iceco fridge/freezer. Only con is the price...

Chris, What is your source for those parts? John

So I was washing my truck the other day and while I was standing on the bed cover washing the roof I started thinking about what a good platform it might be for some sort of rack that I could mount 1 or more solar panels on. I could use it to charge a battery for my truckbed fridge as well as set up a switch with a second output wire so I could also plug it into the Ollie to charge the battery bank. The nice thing about it would be that I can tilt the panels to any degree needed and face the truck in the proper direction very easily. This is just an idea at present but would be interested in any thoughts or perspectives that the group might have. I'm guessing I would build the rack out of aluminum. Possible have layered panels that I could slide out when parked. Like I said, I am open to ideas. Fire away. John

We keep it on the floor of the closet or in the truck. Do t use it very often.

Sure you can. We have a small one from Walmart that we bought for around 60 bucks. Amazon has a bunch of smaller ones as well. I think our is 700 watts. The less power draw the better. John

Question for those who have taken this credit. Turbotax asks for the address of the home where you made these improvements. Did you just your your "main home" address? Thanks, John

Thanks for your thoughts guys. I have been mulling this over for the past few days and have come to the conclusion that I am just going to run some large cables and go all in. I also have a dual zone fridge/freezer that I want to be self sufficient in the truck bed so there might be a second DC to DC charger installed there. I have a 400 watt AC plug in the truck bed so this is still up in the air. I am thinking of something similar to what Galway Girl did on his rig. Geronimo John, Did you ever get answers to the questions you posted on Galway Girls thread? I would be interested in the answers. As far as wire size you are planning on running 2 AWG? Are you going to use welding cable or a marine grade cable with tinned copper? Is there an advantage to running a return all the way back to the battery as opposed to using the frame? As far as the trailer wiring have you determined where you are going to enter the trailer. I would like to go through the front of the hull down behind the propane tanks but I have't checked for what access is available. Is there access under the vanity to that area? Have you sourced all your parts yet? I would be interested in what you have and where you got it. Are you going to clean up and move your battery box wiring? I am planning on moving all wires into the hull through some busbars/lynx distributer. Probably going to swap out the charge controller as well. John Davies, have you decided if you are going to switch over to series wiring for your panels? My list of things to do keeps getting bigger so I guess I need to just start with the truck wiring!!! ;-))))) Thanks, John

Hey guys, I am considering doing a DC to DC charger and was wondering if you could evaluate my thoughts. I have a 2021 GMC 2500 duramax. The charge wire on the trucks 7 pin is fused at 30 amps so I am assuming it is a 10AWG wire ( will verify this). At idle with no load I am showing 14.7 volts at the 7 pin connector on the bumper. My Oliver has a 10AWG ground and charge wire (black and white) running all the way back through the trailer. I am considering the Victron Orion 12/12-18 DC to DC charger. If I mount the charger under the front dinette seat I could minimize the run of 10AWG wire to between 30-35 feet which would have a voltage drop to about 12% to 12.9 volts assuming a load of 20.5 amps due to the 87% efficiency of the charger. This is within the input range for this charger. I could then run larger 6 AWG from the charger to the batteries to avoid any more losses. I have the 3 lithionics batteries in my trailer. Thanks for your thoughts, John

I do leave the inverter charger setting to auto on. That is what was confusing to me. The batteries were off so I’m not sure why the inverter was “awake”. I guess I’ll go over and take a nap in the trailer this week and give it a listen to see how often it runs. 🤷🏼‍♂️ John

I have my Ollie at a storage lot with 20 amp power to the trailer. I leave a small dehumidifier running in the sink. When I went over the other day to check on it the inverter fan was running. The inverter was off and the 3 lithionics batteries were off. Is there a reason that that fan should come on? Is the going to where the fan out? Wondering if I need to leave it plugged in over the winter since humidity shouldn't be that bad. It is located just south of Atlanta. Thanks, John

Use the hand pump to pump some antifreeze into the boon docking port. That will fill the line to the pump. Take the line off the pump and put it into the bottle of anti freeze and you should be good. John

I'm not sure what that relay is. It says LED lights on it but which ones I am not Sure. Those PEX pipes are just a couple spare sections in case a repair is needed. For anyone who has relocated their negative wires from the battery compartment to a bus bar in the hull, where did you place the bus bar and did you have to rework any cables? Thanks, John

I did a little more poking around and found the harness. The black and white wires are 10 AWG 👍🏻 So I have that going for me. 😁

So I have begun poking around inside the hull to look at wires for adding a Victron shunt and possible installing a DC-DC charger. Are these wires from the trailer harness (7 pin)? 4 of them are not attached to anything. Thanks, John

Thanks guys. I really haven't "used" the batteries very much yet. I'll go ahead and run them down to RVC and the give them a full charge to see what happens. John

Does anyone with the 3 130AH Lithionics batteries ever see a different SOC between their batteries. I have one battery that always seems to be different than the other 2 even though it is showing similar voltage.

Depends on weight obviously but if your truck is capable you might look into Diamondback covers. I have one (light version) on my GMC 2500 and I love it. It makes your truck bed like a vault and if you buy the HD version of the cover you can load 1600 lbs on top of it.

This could be a problem. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elon-musk-to-spacex-starships-raptor-engine-crisis-risks-bankruptcy.html

That’s a good point John, I will have to check for a fuse. I’ll replace the screws also. 😁

Wire connected and port is live. Thanks all. John

It seems that Oliver standards are slipping a little bit. When we took delivery our trailer was filthy. If I purchased a $75000 car it would be shining when I drove it off the lot. After I got to Davie Crockett I noticed the bumper on the door was loose. It was attached with a single screw through the thin sheet metal door. The latch to hold the door open was through bolted with an aluminum backer plate. Why the bumper wasn't done in a similar way makes no sense. I rectified it when I got home.

Thanks John. I was assuming that was the case but this yellow wire is not even stripped at the end. If it was stripped I would have assumed it came out of the ground bus but the previous year diagrams show a yellow wire for the port going directly to the battery. I'll give it all another look when I get back to the trailer tomorrow. John