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Installing Ecoflow Mounting Brackets VBHQ Live!
May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:29
he
0:36
[Music]
0:52
hey everyone welcome back to the shop we are installing the ecoflow brackets finally um I'm also going to catch you
0:59
up on everything that's been going on uh last couple days I've just been recording the shop um obviously haven't
1:04
been doing live streams so we're going to hop on the computer really quick and uh let's get caught up so if you watched
1:11
the last live stream I went through and we prepped out or prepped the floor with
1:16
the bonding primer um to get ready for the U epoxy and uh then we did thexy we
1:24
cut all the uh lawn sill out so we got everything nice and flush
1:30
went through that and yeah got the floor in had to take the shoes off that was
1:36
kind of hilarious because I got a boxy on my socks of all things and I didn't want to roll it get it back in the van
1:43
um and then the final thing that I did was come back with a 100 lb roller this
1:48
is a lenium roller floor roller you can get these from any type of uh equipment
1:54
rental bus company you can rent these um and just
1:59
want take your time you want to go from the middle to the outside and then you want to go front to
2:05
back and then about an hour or two later you want to roll one more time and the
2:11
challenging spots are going to be up towards the driver's seat where that lip is and in the rear lip uh they're just
2:18
challenging because there's this uh um kind of stored Flex that's in the
2:24
floor and it just doesn't want to sit down um it's not the the world if you do
2:31
have a little bit of it standing up at the end like maybe an inch or two cuz
2:37
you can cap that off uh with a piece of uh steel or aluminum strip and you can
2:43
correct that um but it is hard to get it to be perfect around those edges that's
2:49
why it's nice to have uh do the best you can but if you have wheel well boxes and
2:55
stuff like that focus more on the middle part of the floor so when what I'm doing right here uh on John and Susan's van is
3:02
I'm really making sure that when they walk into the van that that entrance area where they're really going to spend
3:08
most of their time is just perfect so taking a lot of time making sure there's no bubbles it's bonded really
3:15
well so I did that and then um came back late that night and
3:23
redid the the rest of it um see next one we have is this
3:30
file so this is what I've been working on that you guys you won't be able to see this anymore um it's already covered
3:36
up so today we're installing the ecoflow panel so everything has been bolted Riv
3:41
nut covered up insulated uh sound deadened uh wires have been ran um hav
3:48
like wool has been St installed so all that's been done kind of behind the scenes so this video is just catching
3:55
you guys up on what we did uh so I went through here and I started to uh just clean up the
4:04
wires um and then I'm test fitting this uh wood panel
4:11
um technically we don't need that panel but it came with a kit and I want the offset to be the same when I put the
4:18
final panel on so I went ahead and installed it um but then let's see here this is me
4:26
just putting the havlock in and you guys have seen this whole process so we did sound deadening with is
4:32
kilm and just making sure everything is ready to go um kind of wrap in the wires
4:38
to make sure they don't chafe on any of the hard uh edges sharp
4:45
edges um and then that yellow wire we ran that's the microwave power so that's
4:50
that little hack that I showed you where you can get a 12 gauge extension cable
4:56
um they're a little expensive for what they are but they have that uh light lighted plug in and for anyone
5:04
that's new to the van life or Camper vans in general I try to give any I try to give uh my customers tools so that if
5:13
they're trying to figure out what's wrong you can there's a light on the end of the cable where it plugs into the
5:18
microwave if that light's not on it's not getting power so it's not that it's
5:23
the microwave um it's that's not getting power so you can quickly go to the fuse panel and kind of troubleshoot from
5:29
there um instead of just having to get out uh you know
5:35
Electrical uh what am I trying to say the voltage tester Vol voltmeter get
5:43
out and kind of troubleshoot it you can actually have a light indicator which I kind of
5:48
like um yeah so I went through and just did some more cable management made sure
5:54
everything was nice and tucked together drew me some lines where I could actually um start to to add my uh sheet
6:01
metal screws and then get all that uh put away
6:07
and what I'm doing is I'm making sure hey TC welcome to the live stream um I'm
6:12
making sure that I'm keeping those uh bolt uh those nut inserts that I have
6:19
open so that I can do the final board and that's what we're getting to here in
6:25
just a second so this is all you won't see this is just more structural so we have a
6:32
quarter inch ply up in top and the bottom the bottom one is not upholstered because it's not
6:38
necessary um but those keep the wall nice and even so we got a quarter inch and then we're
6:44
putting in an additional half inch uh piece of plywood and I'm using
6:50
these uh ZIP walls to actually hold the top panel in uh
6:57
because if it doesn't have this final panel on that you'll see in a second so
7:02
that final panel is what the ecoflow is mounting to and the bed system is mounting to so that's not here yet as you guys
7:09
can see and so in this next video this is
7:16
where I go and I'm starting to uh let me check my audio really quick
7:23
pel on that you'll see in a second okay good all right um um so this is the
7:30
final panel and this panel took me pretty much the longest uh
7:37
because it's a one-off piece and I'm trying to make something that looks you
7:44
know nice elegant clean for John and Susan but at the same time I've got to
7:51
I've got to blend the wall kit system with how I want to mount the ecoflow
7:56
with how I want to mount the bed system and then I want to make look good so doing all that together um it's
8:03
complicated but I enjoy it and uh it just takes uh more time but
8:09
the end result is what you guys are seeing here which is super clean very very strong super clean so that was my
8:18
whole goal and that um I'm happy with that so this is a/2 in uh Baltic Birch
8:26
panel it is incredibly strong um it's almost twice as heavy as the normal
8:33
half inch panels I use for the floor so
8:38
um yeah I'm impressed with Baltic Birch I'm I'm a fan of it I'm a fan of it for structural stuff uh the floor I like the
8:46
floor to be a little bit more flexible um just as I've used these two
8:51
materials so the floor is a sanded ply from Lowe's um it's really easy to work
8:56
with and uh that has has slight bit of flex and I
9:03
think that's good for a floor because it really can Contour to everything and then when that
9:09
uh Marine adhesive dries it really locks the floor in whereas if you use this
9:15
Baltic Birch um you can kind of create some pressure zones in my opinion to where it's almost like a springiness and
9:22
I I don't think that's good for floors um I could change my opinion in the future but right now I think uh for this
9:30
application this Baltic Birch um is perfect so on the left here
9:36
you see two holes so those are Riv nuts going into the chassis of the van and then on the the structure of the van and
9:43
then on the right hand side I've got two more and then I've got two more going horizontally and those are Ford factory
9:51
uh holes so my four holes on the left and right are
9:58
56-18 button had capscrew Riv nut inserts these two open ones down here
10:07
those are an M8 uh but that's a rib nut that has that's
10:15
already that's been spot welded in by Ford so it's kind of annoying to use two
10:20
different things um but the nice thing is the lock washers and the
10:26
washers uh M8 and a 516th uh kind of
10:31
they're the same um or close diameter wise is what I
10:38
meant now let me fast forward here and show you what I'm doing here is I'm
10:43
making sure that uh so on the right hand side I had to go through and um redo the
10:52
right panel and this is why a lot of custom work takes longer than you intend
10:59
anticipate because this panel was already drilled and it was ready to go and it had this
11:04
panel but once it gets installed it moves just like a 16th of an inch or just a hair then you upholster it and
11:11
that's just another hair and then you put this panel on below it and it's another and so all of a sudden you're
11:17
about an e inch off so what I'm doing is I'm trying to just barely get a little bit of that wood out of the way so I can
11:23
get my uh find my threaded insert and I'm so close but I actually
11:30
had to take it apart and uh let's see here where do I take it
11:38
apart yeah so I had to take it apart and just open up the hole oversiz it again
11:46
um just so I can get my alignment right and you'll never know about this it's hidden it's kind of behind the scenes
11:51
but um for DIY if you're starting to get a into van building uh or you're just
11:58
building your van make sure you book some additional time
12:03
uh for stuff like this to happen because it's going to happen all over the place you just you don't know where it's going
12:09
to happen um as precise as I am I'm still kind of going back to these little
12:16
things that take you know five minutes here five minutes there and uh it adds
12:21
up but you you got to stay kind of true to the course you have to follow through
12:27
with the original idea you don't want to half do anything cuz if you go back and
12:32
half do something and just hide it it's probably going to bite you later um so I went through I fixed that
12:39
and then now I could you can see I have now I have the uh these button head uh
12:47
there these are inch and a half long on the left and right and
12:52
those are my main structural bolts for the bed system so that is the plan so that now
12:59
all my bed brackets are going to go here so I got five of them and that's going to give uh John and Susan plenty of
13:06
strength for um the bed system and uh
13:11
not only that as a bonus down here we've got these two opening these holes from
13:19
Ford and these two are adding additional strength and then they're kind of boxing
13:25
in this area on the left which we're getting much closer to the point of today's video which is the ecoflow
13:33
brackets so these bolts um give me a nice structure structure to bolt the
13:39
ecoflow system to and again all these layers of
13:45
planning go into what you're going to see today um so I went through and now
13:52
starts the process of mapping out where to put these
13:58
brackets so at the top you see this bracket here
14:03
I measured down uh 6 in down from this lip from the top lip of the
14:12
uh or what this uh where am I trying to say 6 inches down from where this lip is
14:19
from the window and what that's going to do is that gives me my mattress
14:25
thickness and then I need to add a/ inch for the two wood panels that are going
14:31
to go to support the bed across the bed
14:36
frame and then once I find those two uh measurements I need to find out how
14:42
thick my bed frame is and we're going to do a whole thing on the bed in a minute
14:48
as soon as I finish this today and get these get this ecof flow in the next thing is getting all the bed brackets in
14:53
and then you'll actually see the bed system be installed
15:00
um so we got two and a/4 inches for those Ikea
15:05
uh bed pieces so what I'm doing is I'm just kind of writing all this math down so I don't lose it
15:14
um and then after I do that that's allowing me to go to the next step which
15:21
is on this left side I make sure that I have um that 2in offset that they're
15:28
that ecoflow wants to have and then just
15:34
um kind of Common Sense is you know move the line off a little bit more so you're
15:40
not the Eco flow is not on top of these bolts so that you can still access these bolts whether it is to check on the
15:46
tightness over time or or whatnot so not to cover those up so the next thing I do is I'm
15:53
measuring and I got two um 2 and 3/4
15:59
is I think what I ended up uh staying with on the left side and then the top
16:07
is 9 in down um and that gives me enough uh
16:14
space above the ecof flow so that when John and Susan had the rails and their bed and the mattress platform that they
16:21
still have that air space that ecoflow wants you to have above it so that the
16:26
um inverter dcddc M pvt can actually you know stay nice and
16:33
cool All Right Moving On Down uh I went through
16:41
and again yeah just double check everything I got I got hearing protection on because I was doing the uh
16:50
marking the holes right here and the Baltic Birch is so dense
16:56
that it just kills your ears was it's kind of funny and not funny at the same time but um I was popping these
17:02
holes in and I mean it's just it's very loud all right moving on down and we
17:09
took the whole entire panel out um had our final dimensions and then uh let's see what
17:18
else I have what what's this last video and then I went through and now
17:25
I'm actually um this is where we're at right now is this I took the panel off took it
17:33
to the bench and then I upholstered the whole panel and then I made sure I wrapped all
17:38
where my holes were um and then now I'm taking the upholster panel and I'm putting it in
17:47
place and this will be its final home over the wheel well and then now we can
17:52
actually get to the video of the day so just like
17:58
magic boom we are in the van and we are getting ready to bolt in the ecof
18:07
flow okay let's hop in the van and keep on
18:13
going all right so I've again prepped a bunch of stuff for this video today
18:19
behind the scenes so everything looks nice um if you guys
18:24
have any questions you know put those in the chat I already already see hold on second I already see a message
18:31
here where's the live chat ohou you are you're ve very welcome
18:38
um thank you guys for for watching the videos uh I'm going to let's see let me
18:44
move the video up just a little bit so my head's not cut
18:51
off actually do I have this thing zoomed in so we're not zoom oh yeah here we are
18:59
there you go okay okay finally the Eco flow finally
19:08
finally so ecoflow is going to come with um uh in the Box you get this little
19:14
pack of screws and these screws you have these wood screws that are
19:20
M5 20 so they're 5 mm wood screws 20 mm
19:26
long um you're going to going to have
19:32
uh couple other things in the bag you're going to have the um these are the
19:39
Communication cable uh plugs so they basically they snap in
19:44
to finish the loop on the network communication it's that'll be in a
19:50
different video um and then so we're going to use the wood screws today and we're also going to use the
19:56
M5 uh by 10 mm uh machine screws that actually Bolt
20:04
the unit into the wall and then what I did behind the scenes again is I went through and uh I
20:11
used my punch tool and this so this uh this board is very hard the wood is it's
20:21
very good for what we're doing however you're not going to drill a
20:26
screw into the Baltic Birch um it's going to Splinter
20:32
and so don't do that so what we need to do is we need to use our punch down tool
20:37
to actually punch down you can see how loud that is um punch down and then we need
20:45
to take a e inch drill bit and I've already if you ever pre-drill Holes test
20:52
this on another piece of wood don't test it on the exact hole that you need to be
20:58
the whole ho you need um so we're going to take an E8 in drill bit we're going to pre-drill these
21:04
three here uh then we got four up top and then we got four in the bottom so
21:09
you got eight 9 10 11 so you got 11 screws holding in this unit it's heavy
21:15
but it's not it's not crazy heavy um it's not so heavy to where I'm not
21:22
comfortable using wood screws all right next um right here is
21:30
that uh washer so we're making sure that the unit is not going to touch that
21:37
washer um I do want it all the way as much as I can get it this way because the battery is actually going to sit
21:43
here and I just want to uh I just want to have the
21:49
battery everything pushed back as far as possible in the event that a possible
21:55
second battery may want to be installed in the future just just if
22:02
um let's see and then underneath here right here my finger is this is the bolt
22:09
holding this panel on on the uh in this plane so that bolt is right here so for
22:15
example I don't want the unit too far over on that bolt I don't want it too far over on this bolt so this
22:20
is this is where we're going to be um yes plus nuts so kill plus nut here
22:29
plus nut here these two plus nuts here are the Ford spot welded in plus nuts
22:38
um and just because I like insurance policies not only are this is this whole
22:44
panel bolted in but on these corners and around here I'm going to add an
22:49
additional probably you know 8 to 10 sheet metal screws just to kind of
22:56
finish it up um um I won't do any up here because this is right where your bed's going to be so
23:03
I don't want anything like sharp right here gu imagine imagine your mattress is
23:09
going to go right here okay next um let's drill the holes
23:15
and get this thing going and yeah keep keep asking questions I'll pause and make sure I
23:21
answer them for you but we're just going to go in here and get our holes drilled
23:27
uh again this is where our wire highway is coming up and down so we're safe drilling there
23:34
from here to approximately right here this is just a
23:39
hollow chamber filled with insulation so there's no wires so when we're Drilling in so we're safe here safe safe there's
23:48
no we're not going to hit anything with this um and then also if you're ever Drilling in a van
23:54
just take your drill bit push it all the way back as far as it'll go so you just have like an
24:00
inch um you don't you don't want to forget that there's a skin on the outside of a van and if you're drilling
24:07
on the inside with a to long but drill bit you know you you can Pierce through
24:13
your van which um that would that would not be funny so we're just going to go ahead and uh do this
24:20
one [Music]
24:27
first and then we got this one
24:38
second
24:46
third then we're going to do these top
24:57
ones
25:22
so right here this is the first one I've encountered where I'm going into the sheet metal of the van so I just want to
25:29
I'm about a quarter of an inch from going through it I just want to make sure I do go through
25:34
it okay because if I don't this head of my screw is going to bottom out and then
25:41
it's not going to be a good good for mounting
25:56
this and it's kind of nice doing the power on the driver side because not
26:02
only is your DC todc charging com along the wall and you can conceal it but right here there's a notch out on Ford
26:08
transits for a rear air air conditioner unit for like the passenger versions that's not on the drive uh passenger
26:16
side sorry the passenger vans have this option of a rear AC so there's a bump
26:23
out where this whole chamber right here is open and you guys can see that from an old past live stream but since it's
26:30
open we can run all the wires here and it's just it's just nice to get all these wires in one place um
26:39
also that's another thing that takes a lot of time is getting all the wires in the van into one neat
26:47
area uh so that's important um also if you guys
26:54
are watching you see this weird cable this is super important this is the grounding cable for all the lights um
27:01
and tail lights on the four Transit van if you do not ground this properly uh when you're working on your
27:09
van uh the whole interior light system won't work the doors won't work um or
27:15
the cabin lights when the doors open everything stops working so just make sure you
27:23
uh do that piece um
27:29
let's see
27:41
here K you went through a trailer and wall building shells that that's hilarious
27:47
um yep yep I got a venos trailer too and uh yeah I had to seal up probably two
27:54
holes that I went too far on um let's see we've drib our holes let's see if we
28:00
can
28:07
actually okay they look pretty look pretty evident
28:15
um let's see I'm just going to take some
28:27
screws
28:36
there's one two okay so what I was doing right there
28:42
is sometimes your upholstery does such a good job concealing the holes you just
28:50
drilled so that's all I was doing um that's why it's important to
28:56
have like a measurement I know two and 3/ over here and 9 in down so I can use
29:01
this as my reference pop it back up there find the holes
29:08
again but one thing if you guys see the B vans that I build in the videos like
29:14
uh like Thomas's or this one or the adventure van I like to I want the power
29:20
stuff to look very very neat so you can really show it off to anybody that's wanting to look at your van um
29:28
everything is nice and clean uh all that good stuff so all right now we've
29:35
got uh we got two brackets here these are the Locking brackets um and what
29:41
that means is these are the ones you put on last so they come up in the top and kind of lock it from coming off of the
29:49
mount and then this one goes and it just secures it again um the main Mount
29:55
believe it or not is this one piece of stamp steel so this is this is
30:03
it again it's not it's not that it's not that heavy if you guys watch me enough you
30:09
know that I wouldn't I'm not going to do anything that uh I'm G to have to come back to later
30:17
later it's kind of my thing if I can do it right the first time I'll do it
30:24
right okay so that's our first through uh another question you guys
30:31
might have is um am I worrying about the levelness
30:37
so excellent question so I have a level here and I'm going to use it after the
30:43
fact so I can prove a point to you guys about Vans and it should relieve some stress
30:51
where if you're really worrying about something not looking right or not being
31:16
level okay so for this they uh they give us a little bit of uh flexibility and now what I do is I make
31:23
sure I go for the center of the hole all right
31:29
and I'm going make sure that my clutch on my drill is at the lowest
31:34
setting okay and then I'm going kind of work my way up so I'm on three on a DeWalt drill
31:41
right now makes me feel pretty
31:49
good okay because it's now this is this is a
31:56
excellent so we are shaking the whole van that is excellent so that's a really good
32:04
uh I'm happy with that that's that's a very good mounting um but then the
32:09
benefits of the plus nuts we have one here and here so structurally I haven't
32:15
even put the sheet m screws in I'm still going to be doing that like I said but structurally we have a very very good
32:22
mounting location for this uh um ecoflow box so let's go ahead and
32:27
grab the Eco
32:41
flow now this is the power hub we still have the the fuse box I guess you would
32:47
call it um so if we look at the back
32:53
here we do have about a quarter of an inch offset and then we have some
32:58
Clips right there where we're going to clip into this
33:04
channel um and uh then I'm going to so I'm going
33:11
to wipe this off here I'll explain why in just a
33:16
second um but we're going to go ahead and lift this up and sit it in the
33:26
place
33:50
so I'm trying to keep this as Center as possible there we
33:56
go okay so we've got this in place and the reason I was telling you
34:02
guys to uh I'm not going to drill these
34:08
yet because okay all right so that's perfect
34:15
but guess what we need to cover up all these fan holes up
34:22
here CU we're going to be drilling and we don't want anything getting into
34:30
this anything into the top of that box um so let's go ahead where's our
34:38
bag so now we're ready to put our next piece
34:56
on
35:03
yep and it it's going through two you're right it's going through two layers so technically this is a 3/4 inch
35:10
panel and that's that's kind of what I planned on with this whole uh setup is
35:17
i' have 3/4 in um it was the best way
35:25
to make this into this and then the bed system
35:38
so redo a piece of tape I can't see my holes
35:56
go
36:11
if you using bolted Birch because it is so hard you're really going to have to make sure you push on the
36:18
[Music] drill but don't don't let it come off and you know scratch up your box I've
36:25
done that not to this but to other stuff where I've pushed so hard that
36:30
I moved
36:36
it and there's four screws from this bag and then we'll have four more
36:56
below
37:10
okay so I can already see some more advice for you guys um I'm me take the
37:16
tape off here just to get out of my way so the first advice is keep this loose because
37:25
when you land this it's going to be hard to figure out how far left or right you are from those holes you
37:31
pre-drilled um so we're going to pause from the wood screws we're going to move on over to
37:36
the machine screws and machine screw all that means is it just has a fine it just has a fine
37:45
thread so we're going to get three of
37:56
these
38:26
now what I'm having trouble with with is I'm having to pull the ecoflow back for
38:32
some reason to get the holes to line
38:49
up and definitely want to go back on my clutch setting don't want
38:56
to mess this
39:25
up okay so those also have lock washers on them
39:32
so now that those are in place I can go ahead
39:38
and let's
39:51
see probably going to do the machine screws on the bottom first and then
39:58
put the wood screws in it seems to be the change of
40:26
plans
40:41
upside
40:56
down
41:11
all right so it looks like we got two extra screws make sure we don't lose
41:17
them they might be for something that I can't see right now all right now we can
41:23
put our final four screws in the
41:28
bottom again they give you two extra of the wood screws so let's get these in
41:35
here we're going to set our drill back to three for our clutch
41:41
setting and make sure your drill doesn't grind the housing
41:56
plastic
42:18
okay I'm going to get a little extension because I can't drill that
42:23
without hitting the uh
42:56
plastic
45:20
and then we're just manually tighten all this stuff to check it let's see what the chat
45:25
says
45:34
so the uh so P the components that this is powering would be Max fan uh 48 volt
45:41
nomatic X2 AC unit we're using the one 5,000 Kow
45:47
battery which I think is like 46 amp hours so about
45:52
four uh kind of car size batteries
45:57
are four of the 100 amp hour lithium batteries that um Everybody pretty much
46:03
uses and then we've got a 12volt fridge uh
46:09
microwave uh interior lights and then a water pump um so nice nice
46:17
standard van build um that Ford wire that I'm talking
46:22
about that is the ground that you have to take off of the this uh so down here
46:29
at the bottom move the camera and I'll talk to you about it real
46:38
quick so down here at the bottom on each side of the van there's these three there's these three uh
46:46
post you need get three wires and it's where the ground is for
46:52
the uh um for the van and then basically I'm you
46:58
disconnect this because you need to pull the wire up higher in the van so
47:05
that when you put the wall panels in um they have enough room to you move
47:11
you're moving the factory wiring harness out of the way to help you
47:18
um install your interior panels better easier I
47:25
guess uh so I'm going to pause I'm make sure all this is tightened because I'm not going to come back to these screws
47:31
so that's what I would recommend you guys do if you ever install something in the
47:37
van kind of do it start to finish
47:43
so so even though you're excited to get it in you can you can move on uh when
47:49
you move on you're not having to come back to it all right guys this thing is
47:55
extremely well in there uh I'm going to be doing some more drilling later for
48:00
the bed system so take your tape and close up those
48:08
uh ventilation ports again obviously undo it when you're when you're going to test the
48:15
unit but we're not doing that right now um so while we're zoomed in here
48:22
let's talk about uh couple of the features of the ecoflow
48:30
and then um we'll answer some more questions and that'll probably it
48:36
because I need to keep going on this off camera I've got some stuff that
48:42
I want to knock out um
48:49
so again this is the powerhub from ecoflow uh I think the kit is called the
48:56
independent kit um so what we're doing in this van
49:02
is we are using uh almost all of these inputs and I'll explain them one by one
49:10
so uh I'm let me move the camera cuz I'm probably going to use
49:16
this clip in another
49:22
video all right give me one second
49:37
okay so you guys should be able to see that pretty well let me see if I can lower
49:43
the the light here a little
49:50
bit there you go
50:04
okay so this box is really nice because
50:10
for the DIY you're not having to build super fancy electrical system kind of like I do on the adventure Vans and
50:16
stuff like that this thing is an all-in-one system it has the DC to DC charging on these ports which is going
50:23
to take your engine uh alternator it's gonna bring power into this and then
50:30
we've got two cables and uh normally you have one so
50:38
you have one from the engine going here and then these two will be reserved for your solar but what we're actually going
50:44
to do is we're going to use this one as our 60 amp charging and then I bought another one and we're going to uh try to
50:53
use this additional 30 amp so we can get 90 AMP amps worth of DC to DC charging
50:59
uh cuz technically this second one so the first one's 30 amps DC to DC the
51:05
second one is alterator 2 which is 30 amp and this is 30 amp but I think we're
51:10
going to be able to do it on these two this third one that one is reserved for
51:18
solar so we have our um solar power cable that's going to
51:25
come in and go right into here um so DC to DC DC to DC 60 amp 30
51:35
amp and then this one is going to be our uh solar which is
51:41
a um was that 580 Watts I think and then
51:46
this one will be our first battery connection so this is our connector for our
51:52
48v battery now this unit has a converter for 12 volts that's how we're
51:58
going to still run the 12vt components in the vanand so just cuz it is a 48
52:03
doesn't mean you're stuck with a 48 it does have the 12vt uh Capac uh output so the big
52:11
battery goes here the second one this one believe it or not this one is what
52:16
our nomatic AC unit is going to plug into and uh that is going to allow us to
52:25
run directly off of the battery for um our air conditioning
52:31
unit this third one is cool this one's set up for the smart generator and or an
52:37
additional battery if you wanted to upgrade but if you had the smart generator from ecoflow you could plug it
52:42
into here and then use the generator uh to top off the battery
52:48
system and then the last one right here is your AC 100 120
52:55
volt um um and this right here is our so that's
53:00
our shore power that's our shore power in so
53:06
basically um where's our shore power
53:12
cable ACN so our shore power goes bam right there and so you see all this stuff has these plugs it's already ready
53:19
to go um this next one is just a regular
53:25
household Outlet so John and Susan were asking if they could put an outlet back
53:30
in the back of their van and I said hey you know ecof FL already has one right
53:35
here uh on this back side you have a ground Mount then you have the AC out
53:41
that AC out is going to be your inverter out technically that goes to a distribution box so there's going to be
53:47
a box built here and the distribution panel is going to go uh right down
53:53
here and then up here on this side is the DC out so that's going to be our 12vt power out and then up top we have
54:01
our canvas Port which is basically our communication um so yeah just like ke
54:08
said uh plug-in play uh I'll show you this box really quick just so you get a
54:14
little bit of an orientation so that when you come back to the live stream
54:19
I'll have already built some more of this stuff but this box
54:26
this box is basically going right
54:33
here um so let me tilt the camera
54:55
down
55:04
so if you guys can imagine there'll be a box kind of built like
55:10
that and then this will kind of be built into this box
55:16
right here and the Box will also be built over the wheel well and so all the
55:23
wires will be hid back here um and what we'll do is by unbolting this
55:30
box that and moving the box out the way that's how you're going to get access to all these cables and then the cables
55:37
will come through the back of this box and the box is just going to come in and
55:42
that's going to keep everything super clean and you can kind of see this will be something like something like
55:50
that to where this will be a big old shelf going down and then we actually
55:56
mounting the battery on top of the wheel well so we'll be building a nice
56:02
strong box to uh to hold that
56:17
um all right let's see what the chat
56:23
says so ke says I've got a few you years before I start my build I can't wait to see the technological advances made over
56:30
the half decade that's true I mean something like this you know you never really had for a van um you know you
56:36
were sold really big on the victron or Renegy or you know red Arc which I'm
56:41
still happy with any all those products um this one I just uh I think for this
56:47
build this is just a very simple way toh get this going
56:54
um now that we're not doing anything fancy it's just this is simple as better in this case you know you're not really
57:00
having to worry about customizing and doing this custom wiring um though I mean there is a you
57:08
guys can see here there's there's a ton of time put into getting all these
57:13
cables here but being able to just pop them in
57:19
you know does save time
57:25
um all right so let's do a little bit of a review and I'm going to show you up
57:32
here because I think this is the most important for DIY so this is
57:38
how all this comes together so as you notice we've
57:44
got uh we got 14 in from the top of this
57:49
window down and this is now what all of our our
57:54
bed components are going to be compred surprised of so we have 6 in here which is our mattress thick thickness we've
58:01
got a/ in for the board that supports the mattress on the bed rails we're going to come down one
58:09
two and a/4 inch for the rail system
58:15
itself and then we need to come down
58:20
uh so two and 3/4 so that's actually going to be
58:27
9 10 11 and a half okay and that's our
58:33
11 and A2 um and then we have our
58:38
final 11 and 1/2 12 1/2 13 and 1/2 14 so
58:44
that's our 2 and 1/2 in to the bottom of this
58:50
so start with the beginning think about the end in mine and that way when you
58:55
get back here to putting your bed in you're not you didn't put this in the wrong spot so that gives us our air gap
59:02
our room for a rail room for a bed support and room for the
59:09
mattress and by figuring out these numbers that's also going to give you the the big number you're probably all
59:15
worried uh thinking about is um you know
59:20
how far is the bed how much storage am I going to get for the uh bikes on
59:26
underneath the bed and so for that we
59:33
are let's see what was it
59:43
again redo my
59:52
math so let's let's do this
1:00:04
me find the
1:00:13
marker okay so we have 6 in for the
1:00:19
mattress so that's going to be right there and then we got a half
1:00:24
inch 2 and a/4 inch for the Ikea
1:00:30
frame all right so now we can figure out um let's see that's 5
1:00:39
in so we've got 29 +
1:00:45
5 34 so we got 34 which is perfect 34 is
1:00:51
a good number from the bottom rail
1:00:57
uh supporting the bed to the garage floor that's a good good number
1:01:04
for uh if you want to store bikes underneath your
1:01:18
bed okay cost comparison um that's a that's a challenging one
1:01:27
[Applause] so let's
1:01:33
see the cost what what this this is not cheap obviously but it does save time
1:01:42
for you as the installer putting it in but it also saves you the headache of
1:01:48
not having to make these oneoff cables for every single connection so really it just depends on
1:01:55
your power needs so a system like this um because you're going with a 400 amp
1:02:02
hours that's a good number but because we have the air conditioner unit uh we have two things that we really need to
1:02:09
make sure that we focus on and this changes the price for anything so you
1:02:15
could have a power system like this with a big battery Bank no
1:02:20
solar and maybe just engine DC todc charging so that's one path
1:02:27
uh for us for example the battery bank is at 400 amp hours but we have 90 amps from the dcgc
1:02:35
charging and we have 580 watts of solar so we've got a lot of power coming
1:02:40
in and uh depending on what time of day it is like middle of the day you know
1:02:47
our batteries are actually going to be charging while the solar is actually
1:02:52
actually running the fridge the lights and other components so the solar has a
1:02:58
capacity during the daytime for the fridge and lights um and stuff like that phones to actually charge that and still
1:03:07
you know trickle charge the battery so on those really sunny days you actually won't be using the battery unless you uh
1:03:16
turn on the microwave or turn the air conditioning unit so uh it's all about how you use the van
1:03:23
if you're going to be in a place uh like Pacific Northwest where it's going to be rainy overclass cloudy cloudy all the
1:03:29
time um you know your a b a bigger battery bank is probably going to be smarter and solar is not going to be
1:03:36
that much of your concern because that's just going to be more for battery maintenance instead of actually being to
1:03:42
be something you're utilizing whereas if you're in Florida um that's a different case because say
1:03:50
you're in Florida and maybe you do want to run the AC all day um
1:03:57
uh maybe you do it just it just depends on your use case and and to be honest you won't know until you really use the
1:04:03
van so what I do is I try to I talked with my clients I kind of
1:04:09
figure out what we think they're going to do and then we between the budget and
1:04:15
what we think is going to be the use case find something that
1:04:21
uh either you can grow into or is going to meet your needs right off the
1:04:27
bat what's nice about this one is uh we've went with the unaka roof rack uh
1:04:34
explor dolie Edition and that's the most solar that you can fit on top of Ford Transit so there's 580 Watts up on the
1:04:41
roof and there's can't really you can't fit any more solar than that on a Ford
1:04:46
Transit so that's maxed out um anywhere in the uh I'd
1:04:54
say like 60 to 100 amp dc todc charging is
1:05:00
really good um if you're not uh if you're not going to step up to
1:05:06
a dual alternator system because the Dual alternators can put out up to uh
1:05:12
like 280 amps and if this is all Greek to you we we'll we can we'll probably go
1:05:18
talk about this in a different um video but uh there's just a there's bunch of
1:05:25
different options um so just think of it like a triangle just think of three
1:05:30
things solar on the roof engine charging and Battery Bank capacity and so that
1:05:37
triangle you kind of have to play around with uh uh like for example if you had
1:05:44
anlimited budget you could do as much solar as you can afford uh dual alternators as much as
1:05:51
you can afford and then as the B the battery Banks as much as you need
1:05:56
um but kind of in the real world you need to balance out what those are going
1:06:01
to be so Sunny area where you can use solar you might want to Max that out you
1:06:08
know cloudy rainy area maybe that's not as important the batteries are maybe more
1:06:13
important um or let's say you don't have a Ford Transit you have like a smaller
1:06:18
van maybe your alterator can't push that much amps to charge and
1:06:23
recover your batteries so you got three things and you just got to have to play around with what you're willing to spend
1:06:30
on those components and then what you're willing to uh compromise with in the van because
1:06:37
a Van's all about compromise and that's not a negative thing that's just it's just kind of the way it is um so if you
1:06:45
kind of know what you're working with and how you're going to use it uh that'll help you plan for uh what
1:06:54
system you're using so long answer to your long short long answer to your
1:06:59
question but um so whether you're doing victron Renegy ecoflow red Arc like we did in
1:07:08
Thomas's van to me you know I know everybody's going to hate this they're going to be in the
1:07:14
comments about this one but to me they're all the same uh it's it's whatever budget fit you fits
1:07:21
you and then whatever one you go with picking the
1:07:27
components that are going to supply with the power that you need um that's really
1:07:33
all it's about um it's not one is uh now I mean victron is the highest in they're
1:07:39
going to be the highest end most reliable type of thing but you know they're going to be four times the cost
1:07:47
of a Renegy system for example and uh I've used reny in my personal van for
1:07:52
almost four and a half years now and I I don't I just I don't haven't ever touched anything it just kind of works
1:08:01
um uh let's see here so Pat said that his new Transit
1:08:08
Trail came with dual alternators so so that's good because that's just going to help you it helps with the alternators
1:08:16
being taxed too much to charge your system uh vehicle alternator is solely
1:08:22
designed to uh quickly recharge the starting battery after you've cranked up your
1:08:27
engine and run auxiliary stuff that the manufacturer has already planned out to
1:08:33
run in a van it didn't Bank on you hooking up a big old power system in the
1:08:39
back and feeding it a bunch of juice um so what happens is the alternator is going to try to do this but if it's not
1:08:46
a heavy duty alternator or Raid for it uh it's just going to burn up it's just
1:08:51
going to fail over time and then it's going to stop charging so by having a
1:08:57
buying a van that has dual alternators already in it what you're doing is you're taking a lot of you're taking
1:09:02
that second alternator and that second alternator is dedicated to providing power for this while
1:09:08
the uh first alternator is taking care of the starting battery the engine
1:09:16
um uh all the electrical components of the van
1:09:22
itself uh TC says is it possible to add wake speed and a second alternator to
1:09:27
the ecoflow system um so the only concern that so I
1:09:34
don't know but what I'm the first thing that pops in my mind um thinking about
1:09:40
the wake speed and a second alternator is
1:09:46
uh it has to do with how much that this unit can manage
1:09:54
um because these are the power power input
1:10:01
ports um all right I got a I got a UPS
1:10:08
delivery so give me one second so while I'm doing this
1:10:14
uh let me know what your let me know some more questions while I take care of this real
1:10:24
quick
1:10:54
e okay I thought I had a delivery maybe he's come around the uh the corner um so
1:11:01
let's uh let's hop back on the front camera
1:11:08
here um yeah so it has to do with how much the ecoflow uh I'll look into that
1:11:16
because I have another um van build uh
1:11:21
that I'm putting together and or just like the technical documents and
1:11:29
um they're looking at doing a second alternator with a wake speed but this is
1:11:35
going into just standard 12vt lithium batteries um so that's not that's an
1:11:40
easy thing to do the ecoflow that's going to be uh a challenge because
1:11:45
you're probably going to be limited again this is not me me not knowing uh an answer answer but you're
1:11:53
going to be limited to whatever ecoflow is is going to allow you to put through the box unless there's a way to bypass it
1:12:00
and go directly to the battery which might be possible um if you have a 48volt
1:12:07
charger all right let's hop on over to uh if you guys have not subscribed to
1:12:13
the Channel I want to make sure that you guys are subscribed like this video and check out van Builder HQ where I have a
1:12:21
free cheat sheet for you guys so if you're just starting on your van build or have one in the future I made a DIY
1:12:29
van build cheat sheet I took all of my Amazon purchases over the last three years for the shop I organized them in
1:12:36
Excel document and then I put it together for you guys completely free
1:12:41
it's just there to help you out it's got over 250 items on it it's ever growing
1:12:46
and these items are solar panels fuses Breakers uh water pumps uh PEX crimpers
1:12:54
uh wire criers strippers tools the tool section on this is awesome so you should
1:13:00
definitely check out the tools on this but um yeah all you got to do is click
1:13:05
on this link and uh I'll go ahead and put this in the uh chat but it is free
1:13:13
it's just there to help you guys out um it's a DIY van build cheat sheet and I think it'll really help you out on your
1:13:19
DIY van build um but yeah also don't forget to check out van Builder HQ com
1:13:26
uh website so this is my brother and I uh he takes care of curating all the Articles and then I go through and kind
1:13:32
of do my do a little brain dump and I go through all the ideas that I have about
1:13:40
stuff from shows that we see um all kinds of stuff like this and
1:13:46
there if you want to do a deep dive into any topic that I usually talk about on the channel it's probably covered in one
1:13:52
of these blog posts that we have so comp Power Systems floor step and trim guide
1:13:57
camper van awning power heat uh you know what Ford Transit is
1:14:03
the best camper van conversion low mid or high roof
1:14:09
um and there's just a bunch there's a bunch and we'll probably have some more
1:14:20
um yeah Pat thank you uh so much for for watching and your uh your question is as well always um welcome
1:14:28
them but uh yeah that's what this uh Channel's here for you guys get to see
1:14:34
me watch builds um if you're interested in a custom build like uh John and Susan
1:14:40
uh did with their van my van Building Company is Odyssey custom vans so if you
1:14:47
ever see this logo on my t-shirt or in the videos Odyssey custom vans is the business that builds the Vans van
1:14:54
Builder h Q is what teaches you as a DIY to build a
1:14:59
van and then if you don't want to build your van or stop you can come to me at
1:15:05
Odyssey custom bands and then I will help you uh start or finish your build
1:15:12
um uh this is the van that we have currently for sale and uh we got a bunch of photos here this is our adventure van
1:15:18
build that we've been taking to a couple shows um it's awesome um I wouldn't call
1:15:24
this a DIY build this is definitely you know a professional build um and it just
1:15:30
really shows the Shop's capabilities as far as you know design and uh components
1:15:36
installed in the van so really proud about this one and uh yeah you can check
1:15:42
out more on the website but if you're interested in getting a van built by me
1:15:48
there's a link right here and all you got to do is click on this link so you go to Odyssey custom.com click on this
1:15:54
link and it'll pull up a calendar we can hop on a phone call do a phone consultation and uh love to uh talk
1:16:02
about your custom van build with me all right guys I got more stuff to do
1:16:09
I need to start to locate the bed brackets on this side and then the next video you'll see will probably be going
1:16:15
to the opposite side of the van so over here and we're going to be mirroring everything that we did on the driver's
1:16:22
side um then once those two things are done the van the bed systems in uh we're
1:16:27
going to move into the fridge stack fridge and microwave stack and the kitchen Galley so those are the last two
1:16:34
uh main components of the van um in the meantime we'll be actually dropping the
1:16:39
fuel tank to connect the fuel line for the Webasto uh SDC 2000 heater it's a
1:16:46
gasoline heater um we need to drop the gas tank because we're actually installing LTR
1:16:53
into the floor of over here and we want it so that in the future John and Susan
1:16:59
can um so the L track is so that they can go ahead and quickly get started with their uh putting the bikes in get
1:17:07
going on a trip but the L TR is placed precisely in a way so that they can
1:17:13
actually purchase a pullout drawer slide pre-fabricated and bolt it in so to be
1:17:18
able to bolt it in the two holes that I need to access are actually underneath the gas tank um
1:17:26
and uh so I've drilled through the floor from the top down but to bolted in I
1:17:33
need to actually go from the bottom up because I got to drill through the floor that we just installed so that may or
1:17:41
may not be on a live stream but um so just make sure you have that notification Bell turned on so you guys
1:17:46
don't miss when I go live and uh yeah I'll give uh one minute here to see if
1:17:52
you guys have any more questions um so I'll pause for a minute let me know if
1:17:57
you have any more questions I'm going to uh move some stuff around and then we
1:18:02
will close up this uh this live stream for
1:18:23
today
1:18:38
all right so that's going to do it for the live stream today thank you guys so much for watching and uh stay tuned next
1:18:44
time we'll be back in the shop with another live stream and we'll be working on the van build so we'll see you
1:18:53
then
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