500 Subs Special, Marine One Build Update & Info On Flordia Vanlife Gathering!

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thank you hey guys welcome back to the live stream it has been a couple days here we've

been working on Thomas's van behind me so I've been busy on that focused on that

um a couple delays because we had to redo one of the panels or I did that actually yesterday

um but the cool part is didn't really have anything planned for the 500 subscriber special uh I did have a uh

solar tutorial sort of solar panel tutorial that I wanted to uh

make for you guys and um yeah so that is still on the pla in the plan but uh man

guys 500 subscribers so thankful thank you to everyone who has been asking awesome questions

uh in the live stream joining the live streams participating you know this channel is really about

participation so I want to hear you guys you know the question you guys have

um as far as what you're doing what you're building what you want to look for you know if you guys are in the market for purchasing the van and you

have some questions you know I just really want to fill field some questions on that you know turn that into a future live

streams videos um all that stuff it's really exciting but yeah we're in the shop today

and we are going to celebrate um I'm gonna go through I've got some

videos here I'm gonna pull them up in just a second so bear with me um yeah I'm just gonna wait here just a

second let some more people get in the live stream while I move some of these video files over

uh so essentially what I'm doing is I took a bunch of GoPro stuff and this is

you know this is actual footage of the tutorial that I'm going to go through

and it's about adding an additional solar but it can be really anything you

know it can be your main solar system uh because it's actually a very simple system

so we will go over that and then

I'm gonna get something have something really exciting for you guys it is the Florida van life Gathering that's

happening so we're going to go over that in just a second

get these moved over here it's just so they play quicker while we're doing this

yeah so yeah this one's not really going to be too scripted tonight if you guys have

questions just put those in the chat box below excited to uh to show you guys

that or answer those questions for that matter of fact in a minute we're going

to be going over to the workbench over here and we're going to be going through

uh the new panel layout because I did have to change quite significantly because of our restrictions with the

fold out ramp at the back of the van I can't make trying to make a bunch of things work and sometimes you know when

you have so many things that you're trying to make work you just have to you know face the music and say hey I'm

going to go ahead and uh you know do this the right way take this

apart redo it so it's the whole kind of the whole thing about you know the custom world

but you guys got a couple more files here that we're gonna go over

the cool part is we're going to talk we're going to go through um the the wiring on the top of the roof of

the van uh so it's easy to kind of get mounting points for the solar panels you know

typically the roof racks that you're going to have or you're going to purchase either from Flatline vanco or like aluminous and

stuff like that they're gonna have uh means to having like an 80 20 Channel That's you're able to bolt to or some

type of aluminum you can drill through and make mounts however uh once you do that you have the panels

in place you know making sure that you're able to

do good Cable Management on the roof is is pretty essential even with the wind

buffeting all that all the cables and stuff like that you want to have things nice secure zip tied you want to make

sure you have locations to zip tie things too that's another thing I found out is when

you start adding the branch connectors which are the con the solar connectors that allow for multiple panels to be uh

uh snapped in together gets kind of bulky

so um yeah so we'll go over that it's got about two more videos here but

yeah looking forward to some people joining us tonight now the invite only went out probably

about half an hour ago so might not be too many people but just want to do a live stream for you guys

before the weekend because I'm probably not going to be able to finish the video that I wanted to show you tomorrow

and then I'll be here this weekend all the way up until Tuesday uh knocking out

the the final upholstering some stuff on the van we may get one of those upholstery

episodes in and if we do that will be awesome

let's see here we go

we're getting there

all right a couple more let's see six seven and then we've got yep one more

down here and then that'll be it we can go ahead and hop on into that but on the table over here

we've got our manager 30 we've got the ARB air compressor and that's the Dual

compressor one and then we'll have the uh mppt solar charge controller that is the

Rover Elite from renigy so we will do that and then we will go

back over the van life Gathering event so I'm going to be at that event

um there we go Florida van life Gathering I will be at that event next week Thomas

will be there too so both of the Vans will be together I'll have my personal van and then Thomas will have his van

to show off and if you guys um yeah if you guys get the chance to make

it to the event definitely come by and say hi would be very very nice to do that

let's see here we go

over here one more one more there we go that is the video that I worked on today

yeah so I'm just gonna do some commentary on here because there was a couple things I ran into and I think you may run into the same thing

so we'll talk about this and then if any questions come through the chat

we'll do that so hey Jamie welcome to the 500 500. I

the 500 subscribers special oh man

so I gotta I do have to script some of this stuff uh when I when I write these live streams because

uh it's at the end of the day and I've been working all day and I love doing these streams but sometimes you have to

have a guide so you don't have a

can't talk now hop all over your words okay let's see here um let's go over here

let's check out this first one let me mute it all right where do I want to start

all right so this part of the video you can see we are on Thomas's van and I

mentioned this in the video uh so if you guys have not seen where

we're at in this journey we want to get we just there's a certain use case for a

van that you're pursuing or building you are either going to drive it maybe

full time or it's going to be a Weekender getaway or maybe somewhere in

the middle depending on your use case is how you need to design your power system if you know you're going to be on the

road 24 7 you're gonna be driving six hour days and you're going to be going you know long distance and you've got

plenty of time to have a high amp output alternator or you're able to

you know maybe do two dual 30 amp uh DC to DC Chargers

uh you know if that makes you happy makes your power system happy you're going with that

but if you're doing stuff on the weekends and there might be gaps in between times that you're going to be going on your trip

and you want to have some luxury items such as you want to maybe turn the fridge on the night before to get it

nice and cold so when you get ready to leave for your trip it's nice and chilled you don't have to worry about

putting food in there and waiting for it to get up to temperature it's ready to go the power system's ready to go you're

ready to go so in this case Thomas took the van out last year

did a Shakedown run for uh about two months um and he was on the road a little bit

he parked and was you know not driving it and we kind of got to figure out the

quirks uh of all the components on the van um all the components are good the

fridge is what gives us gave us the biggest Quirk so picture frigo is a

excellent fridge the fridge that Thomas has is super luxurious it's the

luxurious it's the Dual drawer it can be a fridge fridge freezer freezer fridge

freezer it's a very nice fridge but we found a

little Quirk on it and it does not like to go anywhere the voltage range

from let me get my big face on here so the voltage range

when it dips about to 12.8 or 12.7

uh it's not happy now there's nothing wrong with the fridge it's just it gets upset it has a

you know warning to let you know that your battery's being drained and it it

can potentially cause the fridge to cut off so it's just a warning however for

some reason whenever that warning is comes on moments later

uh there'll be an E3 error which has to do with the

um what is it is the I don't have the manual with me at the moment but it's an E3 error it has to do

with the compressor um now if we if I turn the whole van off we

let the fridge you know sleep overnight the power off it resets once it resets

is happy again no problem all the errors are gone it'll run for a week and a half no problem

on freezer freezer hardcore opening the drawers I put it through his Paces so

nothing wrong with it but there is a point to where if the van gets too low

uh it doesn't get happy and then that uh if the error comes up

so it's kind of like it's like a cascading problem where Vans low low voltage low

voltage creates the E3 error um so it's more of an a nuisance because

it beeps so we don't want to do that so what are we going to do well we need to keep the van at 100

percent as much as possible so what we decided to do was let's not focus on adding

uh as you saw in one of the previous live streams and additional alternators about twenty five hundred dollars that does

not include uh this is the nation's alternator that does not include

the cabling you need to run that power that high amperage to the back of the van uh Power would just be power cables

uh you need at least uh maybe two Watt

um cable or even for going to the uh

back of the van depending on how much current you wanted to push back there to charge the batteries and that's very expensive that could be upwards like 300

that is just the copper cable 300 bucks plus 2500 plus install labor

um the fittings so you can see it kind of it doesn't make sense because we're not

that far away from getting a good uh solar system up on this roof

um it's been uh so yes the ultimate the second alternator

didn't want to do that for reliability purposes um I didn't want Thomas to be in a

situation where we're maxing out his Factory alternator you know going above

like 60 amps or in that range um and haven't always charge

we wanted to I wanted to do something to where it's more it's easier in the alternator and let's

just max out the solar because the uh he gets good son

uh the you know the van is going to be parked in the driveway so adding additional

solar for the week that it's in the driveway before the weekend trips made the most sense

so we went with uh four 50 watt renergy solar panels and

we'll get back to our video here so what I'm talking about in this video is we're working on the mc4 connectors

so the mc4 connectors are the connectors for all your solar panels and I'm prefacing in the video here that

uh you see I have all the tools on top of the van so there it's glass on top of the solar

panels as long as you place everything and you're cognizant of where you're working

you'll make sure that you won't crack anything or scratch anything just be very nice gentle with it

um but it does make the work that much easier now what I'm pointing to you is I made these custom Square aluminum tubing

rails and I bought these end caps off of Amazon to give it a real professional appearance and I didn't want to have the

whistling effect that is potentially uh something that might happen

when you're going down the road due to the orientation of the ex the

aluminum tubing um that way you cap it off and we are

good to go so we have uh we have we got them all here and what I'm doing now is I'm

actually making the mc4 connectors the fun part about building the Vans are

you you can buy so much equipment so the two boxes of the Renegade 200 watt

solar install kits that I bought we can use as much of that kids as we

want but we still need custom connectors and what I'm showing you here is a couple of tools

to crimp down the mc4 connectors the one I just showed you is actually too big so

on the left side of the screen there's like a a Cobalt tool I'll move this out of the way and that Cobalt tool is what I used it's

a insulated slash non-insulated uh crimper plus a wire cutter so it's

kind of uh best of uh Both Worlds

um so I use that and the um this is a good place to pause so you

can see our layout uh where so the box is keep your boxes

when you're installing solar solar panels are always on so you want to make sure that you have a box over it to

limit the amount of light and yes garage light you know shop light is providing current

through the panels um it's I don't quote me on this because

I don't know what you're doing at your house but it may not be enough to shock you but

Safety First just make sure you cover the panels um to prevent them from actually being

as active as they possibly can be and then we're moving on in we are

moving down um let's see here where I go

so let's get into cable management so we're bringing all of our cables to

the back here and we're starting to put them into our uh

kind of our wire highway I call it and I always just work step by step by

step so if I install the solar panel over here on the left I'll go ahead and zip tie those wires

and bring them all the way to the right and once I get the solar panel right here in front of me I zip time over the right I don't I don't go back and do all

the cable management because uh it's just better to do it as you go

um if you can and then if uh here we go here we go

that was good that was good let me get back over here so on this side we have our spot over

here 50 Watts going to go over there and over here on the right I'm going to show you

guys where I put all these uh roof penetrations in the van

I do them all individual so in case in the future I need to do maintenance or some type of or Thomas wants to add you

know uh something crazy to the roof we can

we can pull these out we can we write we rewire things and um we don't have to disturb whatever

wire is okay nothing wrong with it um the why are glands where you have

five or six wires going into one big hole uh I'm not a fan of that because as I'm

doing this van for example we want to add two more things I don't have to disturb these other cables to add my

secondary system so sometimes with the cable glands you know you're disturbing something that

has already been uh it's got lap sealant on it and it's been sealed down and

you're uh just but you don't want anything to potentially leak

all right so getting through here just a little bit we have our tools mc4 connector

and I'm just showing you guys um what to do and we'll have all this in a detailed

video but I just wanted to go through it in this one uh so this next video

what we're doing is we are drilling our holes for our aluminum channel let me get my head out of the way here

so this is stuff you can do at home as a DIY you can buy these square tubings off

of uh you know at Lowe's you can uh clean them up with natural denatured alcohol

uh scuff them up a bit if you want to and then paint them with Krylon

um what is a Krylon that I'm using fusion acrylon fusion it's a it's an

exceptionally good paint I painted my roof rack that I made uh on

my first van and paints lasted about three years um pretty good hasn't has it peeled or

anything like that so pretty impressed with that that's a direct sun car washes so pretty good

uh also the aluminum's Light plus we can sketch out and kind of duplicate as much

as we can with these panels they're all standardized 50 watt panels from renergie

and uh on the right side I've already pre-cut and drilled that on the left side what I'm doing right here is I want

to show you guys that when you have to make a custom hole into a solar panel

you want to put see this orange Square you want to put some piece of Steel underneath there so if you accidentally

went too fast through the aluminum because every every time I build stuff

that uh drill bits act funny expensive and expensive ones you know

might cut really clean you might have a snag on it it's how you use your drill

all that stuff but sometimes your drill bit will catch especially on stuff like aluminum and if

it catches really hard you could pull it straight through and hit something you

don't want to hit so in this case you want to make sure that you have some piece of Steel

underneath here so that when I come down I don't go through the the solar panel

because it's possible don't don't drill through your new solar panel because this whole this whole thing would be a

waste so essentially what I do is I'm drilling through

and I'm just going very very easy making sure that my thing doesn't shift but then when I go down you know what

see it is actually it hit the orange part and we're all good

little little DIY tip there um using all stainless steel hardware for

this and I go ahead and uh

now something I do here to keep the top bolt from walking is I actually put a

lock washer underneath the top bolt and then I do a lock washer underneath

the bottom bolt and then I also do a

like a captive nut type of thing on the bottom

so there you go we got one side done over here and that is going to go flush

to the roof rack uh I'm sorry that's going to be

okay what I'm talking about here is that is where the vent fan is on the right side you see how it's

offset that's because we already had a uh solar panel run from our last

um uh from our last install of the 175 watt panels

so you see right here this port right here this is our Branch connector for

our 175s that cannot be moved because it's

already in a position we don't want to screw it up but you're gonna see here in a second

just how close this comes to the uh vent fan the front vent fan

make sure to turn my phone off here

and what I'm doing is you want to go ahead and unzip tie those cables get them nice and free so that you can move

them to the back of the the van

we had to adjust the front and back 175 watt panel

then I'm just talking about mc4 connectors this fast forward here and you guys can see look at our clearance

well we didn't have any clearance we we did have clearance but I'm just saying it was really really close

it gets exciting when it's that close and so yes I am drilling on the van

but what I do is I measure the depth of the drill bit as I cut down

you don't have to really worry about aluminum too much because uh it's not like cutting through the

sheet metal any sheet metal Burrs are going to instantly turn to rust the

aluminum Chevy's will not instantly turn to rust so it's okay to do this just make sure

the depth of your drill bit is chucked in your drill in a way that

if you accidentally go all the way down and bottom out it will not start drilling a hole into the roof of the van

it's very important um

all right so we drilled that and then we're going to uh let's see go to the next video

um so we've got all of our bolts in here uh and then what I'm doing here is I'm

putting in those uh plastic uh plugs so you just get them

off Amazon super cheap and uh you know it's just a very

professional way to finish this job you know really do it the right way the

first time and it keeps that in from you know howling whistling All the Above

and then once we do that we can go over to

um where are we going all right so I'm just popping in those panels let's go to the next video

so up right here we're going to start doing our cable management we're pulling that 50 Watts cable towards the back

and we're putting in our mc4 connectors just moving it towards

the back next what we're going to do is uh we

went through and started drilling our holes and what I'm talking about here in this video is you want to take your

cable glands so let's see if I got an example

so you want to make sure that with your cable gland kit you guys we have talked about this before

so these guys you want to take it out and then you want to unscrew it and where the threads

are you want to take a pair of calipers um I would not do a tape measure but if

that's all you have I understand but you want to get your calipers

if you can and you want to measure that diameter and then what you're going

to do is you're going to get a step drill bit that's what I had in the beginning

and the step drill bit is going to uh where is that drill bit let's go back

here okay so this this drill that I have this

is a step drill bit and it's used a lot and you know sheet

metal Automotive because it it does what is what it says it steps down into

the sheet metal but what's nice is each step is uh it's got a fraction on there

for you know a half inch three quarter inch uh you know 7 8

and so as you step down you're able to know what diameter opening you're going to have

so that is a it's it's really convenient convenient to use

so moving on in what I'm describing here is the top of a

van actually has like a gutter system it has a way to evacuate water uh

systematically so these corrugations are not only for support of the van roof

but they also allow for drainage so this seam in the back of the van

is like the back gutter and where my caliper is are behind it

is where it drains and then goes out the back of the van so many people don't really know that

what's cool is uh I'm breaking the

okay this is not the cool part I'm breaking the rule right here rule where these uh three are in this channel I

have to do that because the slatted ceiling starts right here behind it and

there's no other place to put it so I did have to break the rule there

but I just made sure that I sealed it up extremely well I'm still going to put another coat of lap sealant on there

just as a triple protection the two solar inputs behind it already

have the triple protection which is uh the O-ring gasket

the uh let's see what is what is the thing I use

um I use Permatex Ultra black gasket maker

so I put that around the hole and then when I squeeze the threads down

everything goes in there I leave it overnight and it creates its own little additional gasket and then I go back on

top and I put the lap ceiling around it so three levels of water protection

but yeah that allows you by keeping it on the top of the corrugation

the water drains from that into these main channels so in a perfect world you would want these

three to be on this part right here but we can't because of the slotted ceiling

so this as long as it's sealed well it's gonna be no problem

uh and then we start to get into uh punch down tools so this one right here if you guys just saw what I'm doing is

I'm taking this punch down tool and I'm making sure that this is where I want my drill bit to start uh drilling now you

got to be careful if you guys can see right here usually I just do like a marker and I go

for it um just because just in my experience you know not showing off but if you do

use this method of the punch down you can see how it's dimpled the roof a little bit

and that's okay we're going to cut this hole out anyway but just be careful because this steel tool if you push too

hard and it's it's uh on an area of the van that's weak you will Dent the van so

you got to be careful

and so next I'm talking about measuring the uh

gland with a caliper to make sure you have a proper step down location

uh what I actually do on my drill and I'm trying to see where if I showed you guys there you go

so what I've done is I've gone on my bit and I've actually I'll paint on or Draw on with a

permanent marker the line that I don't want to go past when I'm drilling through the van roof

uh that's just my safety so you guys can see right here I've got this black permanent marker on here and

that's allowing me to make sure I don't go too deep into the into the middle

all right and then we're just going to get in to here and we're going to go ahead and drill our hole so go really

easy these step bits tend to just eat through sheet metal

um let's see do I do it in this film yeah of course the GoPro dies so we're

gonna have to go to this next one

okay so this one's good um if you guys want to

let's see I'm gonna make this video so if you miss if you actually want to see me drill the

hole out uh let just let me know

I think you guys know where the hole is going to be drilled it's gonna be drilled right there so we'll get to a piece of that this

next part um I'm talking about the mc4 connectors so we have all these mc4 connectors over

here and this part of the video is going to teach you how to take apart a mc4 connector

that's designed to be crimped onto a cable so you have a very short run

and you get a you had a solar panel kit that comes with two you know 20 foot cables we obviously

obviously don't need 20 foot cables so this will this kit you can buy it'll give you four additional connectors

four pins uh positive and four negative pins just like this and then you can

customize your cable that way you can use like a 20-foot cable and maybe cut it up into four cables or even eight

cables depending on your uh situation

and so yeah so we'll go through um which one is a positive one which one's

negative typically the one with the rubber gasket that you can visually see is the negative that one right there

and this one over here that is the bulkier one is the negative

uh these are the crimpers that uh or the um

wire strippers that I use we did that in a live stream it was the

one talking about Amazon the top 10 Amazon tools for Van Builders or di wires and so I used that one

and then we just move right along we're getting into uh putting on the

sleep so in this tool let's see if I can get back to where

that is so there's a dip in this tool and there's a like a pen right here

and you want to put in your crimp connection for your solar you want it this bottom portion to fold the bottom

end of your solar tip

not sure if you're going to be able to see it on this camera but you got your you see these little see these little

fingers here you want them to fold over the wire

and once they fold over the wire you can go ahead and get down on this really well

and the part that doesn't fold this pin is going to push it and make a U indentation into the cable

and that U indentation is what is going to make sure that uh

this little dip right here just gonna make sure it doesn't pull off and it's a good crimp but once you do that make sure you put

your cap and your bushing on there first you only get one chance to do this this

part right here so this next part okay as this you only get one chance to

slip this on there so when this goes down and then boom it clicks just like that

that's it it's locked in can't change it after that if you mess up and used a positive terminal instead

of a negative terminal or whatnot you have to cut it off throw the trash can start over again

and then this last part's really important you want to make sure that this gasket gets pushed in to the inside

so don't crimp it down like that put in the inside

and then take your outer part and crimp squeeze it down

the next thing you also want to do is make sure that when you take these tools to tighten it down

that you close this Gap up as much as possible that guy right there close it

up and then uh these tools are they're kind

of uh they're kind of silly but they slip in a

good way so when you're not supposed to over tighten it it'll keep slipping on you

um and then you can use that as an indicator that is tight but you don't want to over tighten it and you really don't want to make sure you want to make

sure that you do not twist the cable you actually only twist the connector

um but if you guys want more information on that we will put that into a dedicated video

uh so these are mc4 connectors that's what they're called so I just made both of these I'm gonna go back up on the

roof and install this into the van

um I think did I just play it again I did all right so we're back up on the root

roof of the van and we're just doing some cable management we're pulling the right side

of the cables we just made and we're moving them all the way to the left side

so we're gonna get that cable management done we're going to put some zip ties and then we are going to move over to

um our next solar panel we're going to unclip the wires and we're going to do the put the rails on so

this one we have uh we got all of our stainless steel Hardware

and we're going to begin to put everything together so we didn't I

didn't show this in the beginning of the time lapse because I had it later um

and so what I'm doing is I'm measuring the second bar because remember we have

to offset the passenger side because there's already wiring for the uh

the original solar panels that we have to consider

so I'm going up there I'm doing a little test fit

and then once I get the test fit done we're going to move into the last couple

of videos here and then we'll go into talking about Florida van life Gathering and that'll be our stream tonight

um I think everybody's busy tonight it's not that pretty many people on YouTube at this moment

um but here we go we are putting the solar panel on we got to butt it up all the way against our

uh roof rack towards the awning and then once it's by the awning

we can use it as a reference point I always want to have some type of reference point um when you're working on stuff on the

van so now what I've done is uh I have

clamped in these two bars in their new location

and I think I zoom in with the uh camera here in a second but I use my ruler

or my uh Square to make sure that I don't go through the solar panel

and then once I go do that I put my Hardware in go ahead and bolt it down I guess I

didn't show you guys the drilling let's see here if I get some Drilling in here

there we go

so we just drill through and then just you know it's okay if we bump that little thing because we have

protected it all right so putting in Hardware I

always use stainless steel Hardware got everything nice and tight

then once we are happy with how that is put together we're going to hop Back Up on the Roof

you can see we've got so many cables up here we just we want to make sure that cable management is always a priority

when we are Up on the Roof because you got to think about when wind vibration bumps on the

road you don't want to hear this tapping or like a little clack clack noise because

in a van where is it coming from so if you can eliminate those area from all the areas

you're gonna you're you're gonna be way more happy

all right so I'm going ahead and lining it up and then you see how I'm push having to push down

so what I end up doing is I do have to move a couple cables

uh and by move I just kind of rerouted them there was a bolt sticking out from

the awning and I just had to put those wires underneath that bolt I did so I didn't uh adjust them or anything like

that

all right so got that moving on in we've got uh then we're drilling those holes

on top of the roof uh we're drilling them in the back

and we're just going very very careful we're careful of one because we want to fall off the ladder

because we're kind of a precarious position two we don't want us grab something the bit break and the

drill Falls somewhere we just want to create more problems for ourselves um and then we want to make sure that so

what I'm doing I'm taking my right arm and my hand and I'm pulling the panel towards the awning because I want it to

be as flush nice and clean because I need every I mean millimeter to keep it

away from this vent fan in the back uh so that's all good

and then once we are done we've got everything drilled bolts are in

nice and happy

all right now we're going to go to this next one

uh see we are talking about okay here's the panel

all right so this is the new arrangement for the

panel we had everything right here um but unfortunately

it's just not going to work um so the next thing we're doing is we are

moving into uh so ignore all that mess in the van we're working on all that

and then this is kind of where it leaves me today these connectors so what I'm trying to do is clean all this stuff up

here we go this better video so now this is our new location uh we

have our shore power connection for Thomas right here on the left and this is essentially just to be nice and neat

for the van show um the final solution uh is to be

determined depending on where we want to drill through the floor of the van which I want to hold off as much as possible

if this new power system solves all our problems less holes drilled in the van is always better

and now it gets us to our next part of the video where we're going to hop over to the other camera we're going to show

you this new Plumbing that we're doing for the air compressor

so let's get that camera on and we'll hop over there

all right guys if you can't hear me let me know I got my phone here so it should be able

to frame everything up for me

but yeah just yell at me in the chat if it doesn't sound if it sounds like I do

not have audio there we go we got audio good and I'll be checking back in just a

minute to uh make sure okay let me zoom out just a hair

don't chop my head off

foreign

I think we're good foreign guys so here is the uh the system

so we've got the redarc manager 30. we talked about this a bunch in the live stream this is the

uh both the DC to DC charger from redarc and an integrated mppt solar charge

controller uh rendergy kind of makes a product like this that I'd like I actually have it in my personal van but

the red Arc system it's got nice Communication in down here that communicates with the red vision

and yes we will be getting to a full walk through that shortly

but let's go ahead and move this out of the way so I can show you guys um what we're going to do tonight

plan is to drill a hole through here show you guys how to install this

uh see what size are we using I think it's a two and three eighths

it's this right here this is a yeah two and three eighths

so some a hack that I got when I was doing stuff is I like to

use these Furniture plugs so they're made for cable management on desk so you

guys have seen these in schools you know home office you've got this your cords come out of it and you can kind of neat

make stuff nice and clean but guess what you can use it on a van um and so this is what I'm using

uh we're going to take this and we're going to drill a hole over here

and then that is going to be what we use for feeding our massive cables for the

ARB the cables for the ARB are massive they're um they're about this this diameter I don't

know if you guys can see that it's uh what maybe an inch and a half

and then we have four 10 gauge wires for the solar charge controller so the solar

charge controller is actually going to come over here and it'll be on top

and that way I'll tilt this up so you guys can see it

this panel is extremely heavy but essentially we're going to have uh

we have their our solar charge controller all the cables will go into here then we'll have our air compressor

all of its uh communication cables will go here and it does keep it neat that we

don't have to Route everything up from the bottom to the top it'll all be behind the scenes nice and concealed

and then one thing that was uh you guys will see

was the challenge the most challenging part of this panel

uh is ARB this air compressor it's really designed to be in an engine of a

four-wheel drive vehicle Jeep like mounted somewhere but we just didn't have enough room

anywhere in the van so this is really where I had to be well the mounting plate for this is extremely unforgiving

uh you essentially can't remove the device from the mounting plate you can and I

have but it's eight screws they're all bushing mounted and they're just

I mean if you're not you know not Pat my own back here but if you're not someone that's good at taking stuff apart you

may not get this back together that's all I'm saying I'm going to flip it over to the back

and you'll see why this has been kind of a challenge is you have to you can't you

can't Mount the plate from this side and then have bolts on the back this is this device itself is threaded

so you have to go through the back so you guys can see here

um this is where uh these bolts are I'm just making

sure that you guys can still see me in the frame this right here in the back we have our

uh bolts that hold in the air compressor itself so you see it's kind of it's extremely over engineered I like that

stuff but at the same time when you have to change stuff in the van it does take up precious time

doing that and then what we've done is if I can pull this up here

hopefully this will be in focus I have routed a quarter inch elbow into

a air compressor flex line to another elbow coming straight down

and then going into an actual ARB branded Quick Connect

and so this is where Thomas is going to take his hose and this will actually Quick Connect

into here and that will be part of his uh

system that he's going to be able to air down all of his four tires when he goes off-road changes PSI and we actually have a kit

uh and I'll show you guys in a separate video and that is what this will

actually plug into and be his uh his air

pump up pump down solution

and so in a perfect world I wanted this to be uh

it's a way I can hold this up

you guys can see it

that falls down then that's just what happens

all right yeah it looks pretty good I like that

the other thing with the ARB is this this this uh connection right here it

comes with a couple different options for connecting in the kit uh believe it

or not I had to buy three different kits from ARB one to get this

the second one is to get the mounting fittings so you get these fittings

with the bracket we're not going to use the bracket now because the bracket can only be used

with a specific type of compression fitting

and that's just too complicated the one way I like to build is

I always imagine my customers middle of nowhere are out in some rural area and

they have like maybe a Walmart our Lowe's or Home Depot and if you

think ahead and you get components that can be replaced at those locations versus a

you know aircraft compression fitting uh it still does it still does the same

job but if you get too fancy you're making it harder on your customer later down the road to be able to pick

something up from a store locally when you're not there and just do a simple repair

also if you're not there or they can't bring the van back to you

um if they take it to a shop if you just make things very simple just a very simple design

somebody can get take one look at this and say oh you know let me just pick up one of those or oh

this is you know broken and they can they can help you out but if you get fancy it just complicates

everything the same with these uh plug connectors

I like to hide as much stuff as possible but let's just say you know this unit

need to be taken off or disconnected having to be able to access the cable and unplug it for whatever reason you

know just think of that when you design stuff if you're a diyer or

you know a professional watching Nick on the channel anyway so what I'm going to do is I'm

going to drill this hole out and then we're going to just Mount our uh

well we'll map the solar controller later but I'm just going to drill this all out right now just show you uh how

cleanly that piece fits in there and then if you guys have any questions

just put those in the chat below

um so what am I using uh Linux Le nox

um these hole saws from Lowe's are nice they're very expensive unfortunately

but however the reason they're expensive is because

a couple reasons this whole diameter is not your typical

hole diameter so most hole saws come in like inch inch

and a half two inches two and a half but these uh the fitting that I need

I designed I got this fitting because this is a plastic

snap from the cable and you can take these these plastic ends off they're

just like a guard to keep the these terminals from pulling out of the cable

and you can pop this off take it with you to Lowe's or the Home Improvement store wherever you're going

so take that out and then you want to make sure that when you're looking for this stuff that it can fit through here

okay and that should be obvious you want it to fit through so that once you've drill

the hole and put this in if you need to pull the cable through you already know

that the widest point of the cable is going to be able to go through this portion

um and you kind of have to balance it out because visually you might say man this is really big

um I wish I could pull in the the cable over here

because it's so it's so big there we go we got the

we got the wire loom that I'm using this will be this will help

so so this is the wire loom uh I'll double check my head Focus real

quick

there we go

okay so this is the wire loom that we're using now this is just for the ARB air

compressor we will also be pulling in four of these wires

so if you get the diameter of four of these let's say that's about a half inch so

you get a half inch plus an inch like I was saying about an inch and a half so we've got this much cable

that needs to go through this opening so once we get all said and done

this will go here and then we'll have our cables be on the route through there and I think it'll look pretty good

again in the perfect world this uh little opening right here would be able to accommodate

this wire with the solar wires and it still might depending on how much we can

pinch them down but anyway so I'm just gonna lay the board down we're going to drill this

hole out we've already taped it off to find out where our location is

and do as much as you can ahead of time

to make sure that you're Drilling in the hole in the right spot

and I don't think I'm going to jinx myself by saying that but

this is this was my next thing to work on but since you guys have uh missed me and I

haven't been on live stream we'll do a little bit of building today

um before I have to work late tonight just keep on trucking on

the van because we got the show coming up want to make sure everything looks good for

the show so we can show it off I'm still here guys I'm trying to find my pieces of 80 20.

uh

foreign pieces of 80 20 to lift the table off of the

panel off of the table so I can drill through it

next also when you're when you're drilling these panels um

I'm not sure if go and do but somebody that was normally watches our live stream

they were talking about layout and layout and Van design and

let's see here see if I can get them I'm in focus

all right so I'm gonna move the focus to this I'll be right back

there you go

okay focus is right here on the camera it should make everything look nice

so I think going do was asking about van design and as you can see from what we did today

um the original plans did not call for uh

the additional solar just because of UK cases and stuff like that so being able to be flexible and

change things is why it's really hard to design everything up front because this isn't this isn't a standard

layout this is very very custom

uh so let me see if I can move this down a little bit

that might be good Nova is wanting to play

we can do two things at one time I don't think we have any comments do we

all right we got it we got five people in the Stream now that's good happy 500 subscribers everybody

so I want to personally thank everyone watching right now for participating in the channel even if

you're not asking questions just viewing is extremely amazing thank you so much

um you know really trying to grow this channel to just help anyone with their DIY van needs uh even Pros you want to

pick up some tips of some stuff that I'm doing um go right ahead uh

yeah I'm just really excited about you know growing this community of you know DIY van building I've got a lot of stuff

in store for you guys this year the first thing that I'll mention here as soon as I drill this hole we'll hop back

on the computer the Florida van life Gathering it's happening next weekend

um it's kind of in between Tampa and Orlando and it is a wild name the the

not the van life Gathering itself but the uh the city or location that it's at

um yeah but thank you guys for uh

your your interaction um with a channel any type of questions you have van

related questions put those in the chat it does not have to be about what we're doing tonight it could be about anything

I'll hop on the computer I'll ask I'll answer those questions the best I can

um yeah let's go ahead and drill a hole here so if you guys are just joining us we uh

we're talking about the solar install some tips and tricks that I use doing that whole entire thing did a little bit

of commentary you can go back and watch that we're now over here to where this is a panel that we had to redo because

um we didn't have to redo the whole thing but we had to move the red Arc from this

side over to this side and because of our ramp because of the weight and

height of this and where it needs to be supported on the 80 20. can't go up here in the roof you know it's just a bunch

of stuff need to make sure that Thomas still has access for his uh

his input Port right here for the air B air compressor

and uh I've got I've got shavings here I got to

get off of Noah's ball so that she can not get dirt in her mouth anyway

I know you guys enjoy that so we're going to go ahead and let's get back to let's get back on task

good Lord um so we had to rearrange everything we got

everything dialed in right now uh we have routed our cable so that the

air connection is good to go for the tire inflator we're moving up here to finally get this

box installed since we have finished our whole our whole entire solar we've wired everything done all the cable management

we got to start plugging wires into this to to to see how we're doing

so this box is going to be mounted right here we're going to drill a hole both the

power we'll go to this for the air compressor and then also the power in from the panels and the power out to the

power system uh the lithium battery is to get them charged all right so let me

let's see here I'm going to mute I'm going to turn this off just for a

second while I drill because it's going to be Extremely Loud

um yeah it's gonna be loud so I'm gonna turn this off for just a second

[Music]

still here guys still here don't leave us yet we are

let's see why our thing is out

I think it turned off give me one second

I see all right guys I guess we have a long

stream right now so the uh thank you this over here is not that

happy

all right so I didn't think we went that long over there on the DIY tutorial on the table but however the

microphone over here thinks otherwise so let me change it real quick check one two three

all right let me hop back over here real quick

[Music]

foreign guys we're back

I'm assuming that audio went out

all right audio's back we're back here so we will

we will come back to that later

all right let's talk about Florida van life Gathering

there we go so hop over we're gonna hop over here on

the computer and we're gonna go to uh floridavanlife.com

click on Florida van life you're gonna see this logo this is kind of their logo for the event uh

now I believe this is the inaugural event so this has not happened before so next week will be the first one

and it's three days February 3rd through 6th of this year

and uh the location this is located in let's see here this is

uh yeah right between Orlando and Tampa the Orlando and Tampa

um and this is let's see here we've got

with lacuchi River Park is that how you uh pronounce that

and so that's where uh it's going to be held

so if you guys are coming from the Tampa area you can kind of see that my computer would stop doing that

as well as coming from Orlando and then I'll be coming from North Carolina all the way up here right

outside of the Asheville area down to this next week

and pretty excited uh so this event uh

talking to uh the staff it's it's looking at about two or three hundred

Vans which is kind of blowing my mind so I'm really really excited and looking forward to this weekend

um if you go to the site and then you go to get tickets gonna hop you on over to an Eventbrite

site and right here I think there's two different types

[Music] so the tickets over here on the right

we've got like a weekend pass and these are for the rigs and vans and

then the day pass um

and but with a day pass you only have access to the event from ten to five and

this is Sunday only there's another one for Saturday only so essentially this is if you were coming to check the event

out for example um

yeah so like you're checking the event out and then these top two would be actually

you're bringing a van to the event so it looks like they are still selling tickets to this I know they're getting

really close to selling out so um let's see all these tickets down here

have sold out the early birds are all sold out the RV Forest have sold out

uh uh that looks like they got a pet ticket here and like additional attendees so

beyond the two of the tickets that are included will be an additional attendee because I think the van weekend pay at

one to two people and then if you had more people you'd come down here and do the additional ticket

um so coming on up we've got up let me back over here

so we'll back up so that's the tickets three days February third through six

and uh believe it or not I'm gonna be there

with uh Thomas's van but I'm also going to be a DIY uh contest judge so I'll be

judging a DIY contest um thank you for thankful for that opportunity excited to uh see what uh is

in the DIY I'm really excited I always love seeing that because you get all kinds of

different perspectives how people you know want to build stuff

um but let's go ahead and look at the schedule so hundreds of vans are coming to this

event as far as the schedule goes if you go to the site click on schedule

uh if you go down to general information this is giving you guys ideas on like

when the gates are going to open up uh on different days you know Friday Saturday as well as Sunday

uh gives you idea uh stuff about you know if you're doing the just the day pass you're not bringing the van

um and this is pretty much of a tentative uh schedule for each day so if you're camping

they'd like everybody to come in uh the Rival and welcome from two to seven on

Friday then they're going to kick it off with campfire and s'mores I mean this is

going to be really cool they've got live music Saturday

uh coffee in the morning at the van life Outfitters Pavilion uh they've even got yoga uh then the

open van tours start about 11 o'clock they have some uh training some

workshops design electrical systems stand fit on the road

um urban camping 101 van life has one part of life nomadic singles happy hour

meet up happy hour uh uh again more live music then on Sunday

got the coffee again yoga van tours and then we'll have the DIY contest uh

first round judging window or let me say they will I always say my

like I'm talking about my live stream they will have a DIY contest and that

will be uh uh yeah judging the Vans more trainings

and demos that whole day uh planning your van layout floor plan family van life

finalist judging window uh materials with Moxie I'm guessing you have Moxie

Vans okay go cool renting your camper van for passive income so go camp so I interviewed go

camp at Adventure van Expo in Tennessee so they'll be there talking about um

bring your van for passive income there'll be a trivia night and then uh

let's see this is this is still Friday you know Sunday this is Sunday

uh then the winners will be announced that uh afternoon and live more live music and then pretty

much Mondays when everybody's expected to kind of roll out so it is a solid three day event

um so I think that's going to be really really fun a lot of fun uh as far as sponsors and exhibitors

uh it's being presented by Van life Outfitters you guys may have seen them and Adventure van Expo as well title

sponsors victron energy everybody knows victron energy uh then we got other

uh sponsors as well so Southeast Overland and Outdoor Expo need to check

out them I've talked to romley so romley I did a interview with them uh talking

about insurance so insuring your van uh Moxie van Co is a van a professional

van Building Company Defiance tools I don't think I've I've met them

I think we all know Sierra Nevada Brewing and flare space flare space and then go

camp um

no but what are you doing uh then we've got uh rubber Vans out of

Chicago moving Oasis Vans West Palm Beach uh live

more camper van live more Camper vans modern times van Co mcrv

Skyla event conversions go code Overland I think they were at oh

yeah go code and Valley High Vans they were at Adventure van Expo vanning in plain sight

uh Southeast Overland and Expo Outdoor Expo let me zoom in on these

yeah that doesn't work um

Beachside custom vans and then Odyssey custom vans that's me Hickory North

Carolina so yeah we'll be we'll be showcasing our stuff there

um more stuff at the bottom event info uh all kinds of stuff down here

but yeah I'm really looking forward to this so come check it out uh the last thing

is FAQs all the stuff that you guys need to you know questions about attending

um can you bring your pet yes leashed pets

are welcome however you must purchase a pet add-on ticket uh pets must be leashed at all times

there's the doggy dump station designated area shown on the site map

and pretty much every mostly people will be camping in their Vans at this event is kind of the whole deal of the event

um however there's other tickets that I showed you guys that is where people were coming for like the day passes to

to check out the Vans you know visit with people um

so this is one really cool part of the event let me make sure

there's some there's so many things here um I was planning on doing a live stream

with these guys but I've just been really busy with the van build so I'm not sure if I'm going to get to that

I might do it next week if possible anyway one thing that's really cool

is are there outdoor activities available near the event and this is one thing that they wanted to uh

talk about is they said most definitely um

the with the withlacoochie River Park offers hiking biking trails River for paddling and

floating activities a fishing permit is required but they have much more swimming is not allowed at the River

Park but there's numerous beaches swimming holes and Crystal Clear natural springs that allow swimming in the area

um uh they'll have food trucks

um they'll also be selling beer the let's see here yeah food trucks

um so this is in Dade City or close they have restaurants grocery stores gas

stations Publix Walmart all that good stuff uh the parks Gates Park Gates will close

at 7 pm and once the gates are closed they will not open them uh I'm assuming

into the next day uh there's a few restrooms uh throughout the park

um don't have porta potties stuff like that uh so for hookups uh all those spaces are sold out this year already

um but yeah you guys can you guys can read this this is just a pretty typical stuff

uh something really cool is uh they're gonna have a bunch of

um like group camping areas so they have so if we go to the site map

this is what blew my mind I mean look at this guys this thing is humongous

um I'm gonna move my head out of the way here yeah but check this out we've got uh the

connected camping up here on the left see if I can zoom in

um and then the first one we got Storyteller Street we've got Revel road we've got trovado Trail uh

Scott Watson way you know go small live large Lane I mean he's got that

area uh that's so cool very proud of that um it's so cool this is this is

happening like this uh let's see what's that

Dwayne Lane Strawberry Fields Way Orange Sunshine straight

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road Abbey Road Electric Avenue the Golden Road rainbow lane trucking Trail

imagine Street Ripple Road

don't is that Dwayne I'm looking sideways Strawberry Fields Way Orange three okay this is the same thing

so this is pretty much how everybody's going to be lined up and then over to the bottom left is where you know the porta potties uh

the uh uh stage is gonna be like the out van life Outfitters Pavilion and then we

got a whole uh line of the exhibitors

um cool so we've got all of that got the sponsors really really cool

um yeah guys so if anybody's left in the chat if you guys any questions uh let me know uh I'm

actually gonna let me put a let me obviously put a link to this

where where am I

uh so this is uh

I'll be at this event next

be at this event next

see next week

yeah I think you guys are planning on going uh you know definitely just say hey on the channel and uh

it might be cool I might actually try if the if the Wi-Fi is good or the internet's good might actually live

stream uh while I'm down there that'd be really that'd be really fun

[Laughter] Jamie as usual funny funny

um yeah so that's the floridafanlife.com is

the website uh so check that out

and I'll give you guys a couple minutes I'm just going to let Nova out really quick and then I'm gonna come right back

[Music]

yeah guys so let me know if you are headed to the Florida van life Gathering uh we got a couple more people that came

into the live stream so guys we just uh we're in the shop uh

celebrating 500 subscribers thank you guys so much for subscribing to the

channel interacting with us asking questions putting questions in the comments um being with the Stream

but uh yeah if you guys have I just saw a couple more people joined uh talking about

Florida van life Gathering it's an event that I'm going to next weekend

and it's uh with lacuchi River Park

so I guess we zoom in here where is this I'm guessing

it's gonna be over here yeah right here so probably this this area

uh but there's like there's a really nice River on the park um I've not been here I've not been to

this but let's uh let's check this out we've got

it's probably where the we're gonna be and then over here they've got the river area

and I guess this will all be well I mean it's still open to the public

um yeah it looks like this see this is oh actually let's let me

rotate it there we go that I think this is how the van that there it is so this is going to match

let's see here FAQs where's the layout sitemap

okay so see this uh tree and everything right here

it looks like this

looks like this right here is the tree so if you guys want a little side by

side we got the grounds and so looks like everybody's body is going to be

powered stuff's gonna be over here all the other Vans are going to be over here this Main Street is this right here

so that'll be really cool and then the vendors and stuff will be set up over here

so pretty neat um hey guys let me know if you're gonna be

at this event I'd love to uh you know reach out well reach out on the channel because I'm gonna I'll be uh

doing YouTube shorts and all that good stuff along this um but uh yeah I know tonight was a kind of

a random live stream just wanted to celebrate the 500 subscribers

and uh as usual we kind of got into the weeds of conversation but it's all good it's all good

hey guys but check it out Central Florida Florida van life Gathering that's where I'll be next weekend

Thomas's van will be there that's why we got to get it worked on and knock this thing out

but um if you guys don't have any other questions on this stream tonight we are going to go ahead and call it here

um look forward to the live stream next week so this will be the last one for

this week but we'll get back to a schedule um pretty good

let's see maybe not next week because we got to get the uh yeah it's gonna be busy so probably a week after that

but check the channel we'll be updating you guys on what's Happening I'll definitely try to stream as much as I

can from the event but uh yeah one more time thank you guys so much for the 500 Subs interacting

with the channel I love all your comments and we'll be answering those in the following live stream but we're

gonna go ahead and end this live stream tonight and we will uh see you guys in the next

live stream thank you

foreign