Outside of the cab Finished

Well when i say finished, there is still a few little things to do, but nothing to stop me looking smug about the progress so far.

Next i turn my attention to the inside of the cab,  trim seats and console to do, Oh and loads of wireing.

I think it looks Cool.

Here is some Pics:

Battery Bus Bars

Today i made the battery Bus Bars, I made them using 50x12 copper bar, this bar is rated at 1260Amps more than enough for my 1000Ah battery system.

I had actually forgotten how hard it is to drill thick copper, but once i got the right lubricant it was a lot easier.

the battery terminals that connect to the bus bars are 70mm2x10  so i am using 70mm2 cable for all the battery connections.
There is 5 connections to the batteries from each bus bar, these are attached by M10 bolts and washers.  i will be keeping these cables the same length, this is important because the batteries information is measured from the bus bars.

you can see on the positive bus bar there is two 500A mega fuses in parallel to give 1000A protection to the battery cables.

The 1000a shunt is in the negative bus bar, this enables the Victron system to get all the battery information.

Both these bus bars will be mounted on a piece of 70mmx20mm nylon, to isolate them from there mounting position.

Random Small Jobs

There were a few small electrical jobs to do that i was putting off for a while.

Fitting central locking actuators in the doors.
Fitting white LED lights under the doors so they light what you are stepping down onto.
Fitting LED side indicator repeaters.
Fitting electric deadlocks to the cab doors

all of these things are now fitted and wired and tested,   Now for the other side !!

Here are some pictures:

Inverter Testing

I wanted to test and program the inverter system on the bench so that i can work out all the bugs before it's installed.

The system runs at 24v to make it easier to interface with the truck.

The system consists of the following components:

Victron Quattro 8000kw (main)
Victron Quattro 3000w   (backup) because i already had one
Victron Blue Solar  150/85
Victron Colour Control
10x 220Ah AGM Batteries  (total 1100AH)
SDMO Silent Deisel Generator  6Kw
8 x Panasonic 265w Solar Panels

I looked at lots of different inverter systems and to be honest Victron equipment won hands down, it is totally scalable, can be programmed to do things exactly as you want. I now have this system on their VRM portal so  i can monitor and control it from anywhere in the world.

This may seem a little excessive, but bare in mind that all the cooking is also done with electric, there is an outside kitchen that is on gas as a backup.