Overland Vehicle Basics: Electrical Systems

Video Transcript

Transcript

Introduction

Hi, I'm Paul May with Equipt Expedition Outfitters. I've spent a great deal of my life exploring this planet in many ways and forms. The last 15 years or so, I developed a company to help other people travel the adventure lifestyle like I have, and it's been a wonderful ride. One of my great pleasures has been to represent a company called National Luna. They build some of the best vehicle-based electrical systems, in my opinion, on the planet. In that position, we answer a lot of questions for folks about electrical systems, the broad range of questions. So what I thought I would do here is spend a little bit of time sharing a little bit of my experience with you regarding the basic overland vehicle electrical systems. Just take a broad overview of what things are involved in that system, take a more holistic approach to tackling that box of smoke, and see if I can't give some insight that might help you with your adventures going down the road.

Determine Your Goals

So some of the things that I want to talk about are the goals that you have. What do you want to do? Vehicles, what's your preference in vehicle if you're going to take a vehicle as your mode of transportation? We're going to talk about what options are out there for you regarding electrical systems, what systems might work best in the vehicle that you have. We'll talk about battery systems, charging systems, alternate charging systems, and also distribution of electrical within the vehicle. So let's take each one of those topics at a time and see what we can come up with.

I think the first thing that we ought to do is talk about goals, and that's going to be a very personal question that you're going to need to search yourself for. What is your goal here? Is your goal to travel the planet? Is your goal to go out for a weekend with the kids? Is your goal to live on the road in your vehicle full-time? What is your plan? How do you want to make this system work for you? The vehicle and the goal are really going to be the footprint of where you start with any of these processes, and each one of those choices are all perfectly fine choices, but it's a matter of what you want the end result to be and how you get there and what is necessary to get you to that goal.

Our goal here is not to sell you a whole bunch of stuff, whether it's me or any of the companies out there, to sell you a bunch of stuff that you're just not necessarily going to need. That doesn't do any good whatsoever. Better for you to get what you need upfront and spend the rest of the money on gas and get to where you want to go. So think about what are your goals. Am I going to be going by motorcycle? Am I going to be bike packing? Am I going to be river rafting? Am I going to be doing all of the above? It really depends on what your plan is. Once you know what your goal is, then we can start talking about how to reach those goals through a set of steps.

Your Vehicle Choice

Now that we touched on goals, I'm pretty sure that most of the folks that if you are watching this have a pretty darn good idea of what your goal is, whatever that plan might be. The next topic that we're going to talk about here is vehicles, and I bet you have a pretty good idea about what vehicle you want, but I want to throw out just a few things to think about and make sure that what you think is the vehicle choice for you is the right vehicle choice for your activity. One thing that we first ask people when they come in and ask, where do we start? How do I do this? The number one question, if you're going to take your vehicle and plan on living out of it, which is what world we're in here, are you going to be living inside the vehicle or are you going to be living outside the vehicle? It's a very important choice to be making right upfront.

What I mean by that is if you're going to be somebody that's going to take an SUV, a Land Cruiser, a Land Rover, a Jeep, whatever it might be of your choice, your color, whatever, that vehicle is not going to have enough space on the interior of that vehicle for you to live very functionally versus going with something like a Sprinter van. Now, a Sprinter van, there is room that you can actually live on the inside of that vehicle. You're cooking, you're sleeping, your daily life activities could be in there, whether it's a Sprinter van or a camper or a flatbed camping solution. Are you going to be inside or outside that vehicle? At that choice point, you start to decide a little bit about what functionality you need your electrical system to work for you. How many or how much battery do you need for the activities you're doing? Do you need to have a battery system in the vehicle? What are the things you're going to start connecting to it? All of those things come into play. So vehicle choice really does start the whole process of your design tree from goal to vehicle to how do we put all this together. Now we'll talk about some of these other steps going down the way, but first of all, decide what vehicle you're going to be working on here and let's make a plan from there.

Electrical System Options: Battery & Non-Battery

Okay, so now we've gone through some different steps here. We've decided what our goals are and what vehicle we're going to be using in those goals, and now we need to start talking about options. What I'm talking about options here is that there is a wide range of electrical opportunities for a vehicle, and that vehicle can run anywhere from a Volkswagen station wagon up to full-size, one-ton trucks. It depends on what you plan on doing. If you're more of the weekender, going to go out for a night, maybe two, the electrical system you need for that is going to be a lot different than somebody that, say, is going to either be going full-time or going to be traveling the world or going extreme on their travel and their adventure travels, whether it's domestic or international, and the intensity of the electrical requirements.

Now, let's talk about that for a second. What I'm talking about there is there are some electrical systems out there that you can take a battery. Let's say your goal is I want to have a fridge in my vehicle. I plan on going out for a couple of days over a weekend, and that's all I really need it to do, and I'm really not that interested in modifying my vehicle to a level necessary to change its current function. There are some options out there that would allow you to take a fridge, charge it from and run that fridge from a battery that you charge at home or you take and charge from an alternate charging system like solar, and you wouldn't have to alter your vehicle whatsoever. It's a matter of plugging it at home, charging it up, getting that electrical charge source ready for you, and taking it with you with the fridge of whatever size of nature you have. Perfectly fine. That's an absolute option. There are options, and I've got a few here that will allow you to do exactly that, and that's great. That way you're not modifying your vehicle at all. The cost in relative terms is quite low, and it's possible to do with just purchasing some basic items. Awesome.

More Advanced Electrical Systems: The Battery System

Now, on the other side of things is where we spend most of our time, and that is in situations where folks are interested in building out a vehicle, permanently installing electrical systems that can be charged by vehicle as well as alternate charging solutions using batteries of various types to create the optimal solution for them. There are power requirement differences between vehicles, electrical system connections that take on some different functions, and that's where Equipt and I spend a lot of time in, is talking about those electrical systems that are a little bit more advanced than simply going out for the weekend, and I think that's where we ought to go next with our discussion.

Choosing A Battery Location

Okay, now we've got our goals figured out, we have our vehicle of choice, we have decided that we want to put something a little bit more robust in our vehicle as far as an electrical system. Now what, right? The next question to me that comes up for discussion is, okay, where are you going to put this electrical system? There's a couple of different options. It comes down to two, quite honestly. You come up with either an electrical system where you can charge a battery under the hood or not under the hood, which usually means either in a pickup bed or the back of an SUV or somewhere on the interior of a van, and some occasions actually mounting the batteries under the vehicle in enclosed cases. All of those are great options, and it's a matter of a decision set amongst those, one inside or outside. Usually, it's an easy choice if you look under the hood and there is absolutely no room to put a battery, then well, then it makes sense that we have to put that battery elsewhere.

On the off occasion that you have room to put a battery under the hood with slight modifications, I personally think that's a great alternative to putting it in the back of the vehicle. The reason why is that in most of the vehicles that folks are running out there, whether it be a pickup truck or an SUV, just shy of a van or something like that, interior space is premium. That space is gold, and so using that space up to put a battery system in takes away from that space being used for alternate possibilities, whatever that might be. If there's space under the hood that is not being utilized, awesome, that's a great place to put it. A couple of good reasons for that. One is it shortens the length of the wire necessary for the electrical system. Current drops in its strength over a length of wire. In the terms we're talking, not a whole lot, but if you can keep the battery that you're charging, your alternate battery system close to your main battery, the better off that battery is going to be charging. Is it a game changer if you decide to put it in the back of the vehicle? No, not at all. It's not going to change a whole lot, but the closer you can keep those two batteries together in the electrical connection, the shorter the distance to the wire, the less voltage drop there is, the better the charging capacity is going to be if you have room.

Okay, so now let's say you looked under the hood and well, dang, there's no room under there. I'm not going to be able to do that. There are solutions to put batteries in the back of it, and I'm sitting right in front of a couple of the opportunities here to relocate that battery system to inside the vehicle or in the truck bed or where it might be, where you would have that management system in the battery stored somewhere within that space, and that's quite possible to do too. A third alternative is to do something that I would call a hybrid, where you have the management system of the charging system for that auxiliary battery mounted under the hood with your main battery and alternator and engine, all that, and the battery is located in an alternate location. That is a possibility too, depending on what your specific situation is and what your design parameters are and what you want from that auxiliary battery.

So there's a choice to be made, a system of decisions that you need to think over significantly here because this is going to be the basis of where you're going to run all of your electrical system from. Are you looking at things like lighting? Are you going to do a pile of lighting on your vehicle, or is it a matter of just simply plugging in a fridge and having a couple of other electrical accessories plugged in once you're somewhere? Decisions like that are going to also affect your decisions. Installation and the cost of that, whether it's your time or your money to install that process in your vehicle, is also something to be considered. So that's where I would start. Decide where that electrical system makes sense, and we've got a lot of options and stuff that we could talk through with you if you'd like. But from there, the other decisions in your electrical systems are going to be based, so think that one through a little bit. Let's go on to the next topic.