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Nomadic Cooling X2 48V Air Conditioner Install Tips
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May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
1:58
he
2:07
[Music]
3:11
hey everyone welcome to the live stream tonight we're going to be going over tips to install the pneumatic cooling
3:17
48volt X2 system um I'm calling this video tips because it's not going to be
3:22
a straight stepbystep tutorial so just heads up um we've already got the unit
3:28
up on the roof um I've got all the pieces that I'm going to be using to install it and so if you're wondering
3:34
about some different options on how to install it maybe some different uh methods for install there's there's a
3:41
couple maybe like three or four videos right now um on how to install this but it's pretty straightforward however if
3:47
you have a low profile roof what I'm going for in this build um this might be something that uh
3:56
might help you out um the different things that we're going to be using are are first off we're going to be making
4:02
our own uh cross member here so I'm G to grab another piece give me
4:10
one
4:26
second all right let me move this microphone here
4:48
all right so when you get this kit you're going to come it's going to come
4:53
with a couple different components here so this is what we're looking at this is the X2 so this is the slim low profile
5:02
unit X3 is a little bit wider uh so these are the components
5:08
that come with it I'm not going to go over all of them but this right here letter C is the cross
5:16
member so that's what we're going to talk about right now so this is the one that comes with
5:22
your uh AC unit is meant to hold this up into the roof of the van
5:30
um for the nomatic for the dedic RTX 2000 this is the
5:36
bar so just give you idea the problem with this bar is
5:43
there's not enough room at the rear of the van to actually install
5:48
this so both with a nomatic with the dedic RTX and the pneumatic cooling I
5:55
made a custom piece for both of those so this
6:04
one you can see right here that this bar end right
6:11
here um the way that this works uh it doesn't fit in here and not
6:17
only would you have to cut this but there's the support is not the way I
6:23
want it um so what I do here is I cut a it's a 20° angle and this fits perfectly
6:31
into the Ford Transit uh where the roof support is and so what you can do is
6:38
this uh piece of metal let me change microphones
6:54
here so just for reference this piece of metal is
7:00
let's see what this is it's 17 and A4 at the base 16 and 34s
7:07
at the top and so I'll show you how this uh goes in there depending on what the
7:14
camera angle looks like anyway it's just uh you'll see minute it's much easier
7:19
than installing this into there because you have to modify this anyway so you might as well just make something that's
7:25
a little bit more useful now again these are both the one by one
7:33
so we're going to be using that uh the next thing that we're going to be using is the uh we need a 30 amp
7:40
fuse block and we need that on the positive leg obviously
7:46
but um we're using this because it's low Prof well it's low
7:52
profile as it can be this is going up in the roof and then the nice thing is you
7:57
can get this from AutoZone if you're in a pinch it comes with two 30 amp fuses
8:03
so technically you could use it for a 60 amp circuit but um that'll give us one spare so John and Susan can just keep
8:10
this their glove box although if this needs to be replaced um probably easier for me to do
8:17
it because we you will have to take one of these crossmember bars out to access it uh it's highly highly unlikely that
8:25
you're ever going to blow this fuse um for the AC unit
8:30
um and then we're going to get into uh these bolt sizes so the one that is longer one is
8:38
the one that comes with the kit the one on my right is the one that I'm going to be installing because uh again we're
8:47
doing a low profile install and if we use the one that comes in the
8:53
kit it's going to stick through the ceiling of the Ford Transit so we don't want
8:58
that we'll be using some loc type 242 the blue loc
9:04
type and then the first thing we're going to do is we're actually going to use some Ultra black uh RTV Permatex
9:13
this is what we're going to put a thin bead around the foam and the DIY van
9:20
14x14 uh trim ring so that'll actually seal the foam to the bottom of the
9:30
actual bottom of the van um let's see
9:35
here trying to think what else I finished up the Anderson
9:42
connector as you guys can see let's uh let's hop in the van let's bring all the stuff into the
9:58
van
10:06
okay triple check my microphone I know the microphone was messed up last time I
10:12
did a stream yep we should be good to go and as usual if you guys have any
10:19
questions let me know in the chat so right here you can see that this
10:27
bar doesn't work cuz not only does it not work but since we are putting our ceiling right up against the rib there's
10:35
no room for this to uh be installed even if we installed
10:41
it when we put the bolt in it's going to come down probably about right there
10:47
it's just for me it's just kind of a mess so I just go ahead and toss this I don't
10:53
use it uh and instead I make this and so
10:58
it's not nice about this is this can go in
11:04
here goes in and as soon as you turn it side to side we've got a little
11:10
bit just a little bit of movement and that is going
11:16
to uh just pop right in
11:27
place and what's nice is that angle is on this
11:36
inside so what happens is you you're we're not going to uh we're using that
11:41
full surface area of this strip instead of just using the
11:47
uh this uh base of the
11:54
crossmember all right before we actually install this
12:00
we need to put our sealant on there and so what I've done and I wonder if I can get you guys
12:06
a better
12:12
view see if I can move the
12:27
camera it's not going to be the best view but
12:35
what we've done is we've lifted up the 48 volt AC up onto the roof and the nice
12:40
thing is the 48 volt unit I can actually lift it up by myself um I have it lifted up on the back with three little 2x4
12:47
blocks and then up here on the front I got two 2x4 blocks and So the
12:56
plan is that we're going to take our
13:05
sealant and we're just going to go right here in the center and do a thin bead and because the surface is so
13:14
flat uh a little is going to go a long way it's really going to spread out easy
13:19
um another reason I like this RTV is it takes 24 hours to cure so that's going to give me enough time to kind of shimmy
13:26
this and move it so I get everything right where I want it to be um I'm going to UND disconnect this uh
13:35
cable for right now um I might as well show
13:40
you what I did
13:49
earlier so this is our this is our fuse block and so what I did is this is the
13:57
wire from um ecoflow this battery cable it is a
14:03
six gauge cable and this box is designed for uh I
14:09
think it's a 6 to8 gauge cable maybe four to maybe four to four
14:16
to six anyway this is just a uh like a subwoofer amp from Auto Zone it's
14:23
actually really nice um it's perfect with the ferals that I use so I use
14:28
these blue ferals that I got off of Amazon I'll show you guys what they look
14:34
like I use them from everything from inverters um anything that's six
14:46
gauge so you get a a big bag and uh so here's the bag and then
14:53
what I've done is I just took two of these and they're uh crimped on there
14:59
the feral so this feral allows a good connection whenever you have a a device
15:05
like this where you have to actually screw it down to make the connection so what I like about this
15:11
housing is it's a little Overkill so it's perfect for the job um it's almost the exact thickness of the ceiling so
15:18
when I put the hav lock in there and then I put this in there it's not going to Rattle which is really
15:26
good but it does take up um when we put this in
15:36
here so we get that in there just like that and then we take our half
15:42
lock and it's already insulated behind here so we don't have to worry about any of
15:54
that okay
15:59
but now this is right where it needs to be and so that's pretty much going to be the home
16:04
for it um another reason to use to make your
16:09
own crossmember like this is that when you're working in such
16:16
a tight space when this goes down see how it's touching but when it goes up here and gets uh bolted into
16:25
place what's nice is this is enough room to move back and forth so it's not going
16:31
to be pinched or it's not going to bind in any
16:39
way um I've already set I've already pre-tightened everything down so I know
16:44
exactly how this is going to clamp down so this back
16:51
bolt I'll give you the bolt sizes that I'm using
16:57
too so we're using uh two and 3/4 inch
17:11
bolts and the rear bolt is perfect it's perfect
17:27
size
17:40
so when this goes up in here this rear bolt will actually have no washer on it and that
17:48
is on purpose because this will uh bottom out perfectly but it won't Gall
17:54
the threads and Bot them out on the nut insert on the AC unit because that's
18:01
held in with plastic and you just you do not want to overtighten that that's why
18:06
we're using Loctite so this will lock our threads
18:12
um because if you torque down on it you'll strip it out of its plastic
18:17
housing and because it's a metal insert in plastic and um it's it's quite common
18:25
it's not unheard of for it to be like like that usually they're brass um these
18:30
are not brass these are steel so that's also interesting um but we have this uh
18:38
this bolt to be just like this and the only one that might be
18:44
odd is this one because we have a very precise washer stack and the reason is
18:52
it has to be just perfect because the ging issue we don't want to bottom out the screw when we tighten everything
18:58
down so that's kind of why this bolt looks like that but don't worry it's
19:05
going to work perfectly fine um let's make sure we put a really
19:11
good amount of Loctite on all four of them and then once the ceiling dries and all the Loctite cures uh this thing will
19:19
be set to go now we're using a blue Loctite
19:24
because in the event of this fuse blowing um we can just take these two bolts out
19:31
we can easily move this pull the hav lock out replace the fuse stuff it all
19:36
back in put this back in here bolt it up put some more Loctite on it and we can just
19:43
move on so nice nice and
19:51
easy um I am going to use if you guys heard in the last video I'm am going to use foil tape and I'm going to tape over
19:59
and seal all of this right here um and it it's none other than the reason that I don't want any of this uh
20:07
you guys can see I don't want this havlock fiber being sucked up into the AC unit
20:15
um I know a lot of builds just keep it nice and open but I
20:21
I mean if you're using uh 3M thinsulate you'd probably be okay but we're using
20:26
hav loock um so once this is down sealed bars are in
20:32
uh locked tight this is all plugged in we'll tape everything off we'll uh
20:40
put in our baffle and then we'll cling this
20:46
up and we'll find out kind of our censoring location for
20:53
this um now this is one of the positive things about this whole entire unit is I mean this is as low profile as it gets I
21:00
mean we are flat up to the ceiling um looks pretty
21:10
good okay so let's go in and go ahead
21:15
and put our sealant on here get all stuff out of the
21:27
way
21:40
so I've already wiped down this bottom surface
21:48
here I'm just going to
21:57
brush this top part
22:10
off now I do have this temperature uh little probe indicator this thing has been getting in
22:16
the way with me the whole entire time I've been working on this so um I'm just going to take a piece of
22:25
tape just kind of lightly tape it to this we don't want that
22:31
to get stuck in our
22:56
sealant
23:25
now we're just going nice and easy with this um there's Sometimes some air pockets in here and it'll make you have
23:31
a gap and we're just gonna we'll come back and get that
23:56
spot
24:26
for
24:56
for
25:26
for
25:56
for
26:26
for
26:56
for
27:26
something
27:56
for
28:26
for
28:56
for
29:56
for
30:11
okay looks
30:19
good yeah definitely take your time on this cuz I'm sure you're you're never going
30:25
to go back so all right so my plan is I'm going to
30:32
let's see how much this see how well this works
30:38
out the plan is to lift this
30:46
up get this block out of the
30:53
way okay and we're GNA slowly set it
31:14
down let's see see how close they getting it getting it to my
31:21
uh bolt hole locations all right looks good and then I'm going to go outside on the
31:29
ladder now I'm going to raise up the
31:35
back and by the way there's a back support strip that I put on
31:41
um I'll show that on the computer but it's just it it just goes on the outside
31:46
of the unit rest on the van it's nothing fancy um it's just there for some
31:52
additional support okay so now just going to slow
31:58
slowly set this into
32:04
place okay and what's nice about the RTV is
32:11
this thing can can move we can actually move it um if we
32:18
need to which we probably
32:26
will so right here let see so we're just going to
32:33
slide it forward so we need it to line up with
32:40
our our
32:56
holes
33:02
so we're not going to put locktite on here yet we're just going to hand [Music] tighten actually going to keep this very
33:08
loose in case we need to adjust the right
33:16
side yeah just barely hand
33:25
tight
33:31
and then I've got an arrow going to the front and then I've got right hand
33:37
side it's technically you can put
33:42
passenger now if you use the DIY van uh
33:48
trim you've got a almost eighth of an inch a little less
33:54
than eighth of an inch right here for the foam to compress so I've already uh we don't want to
34:01
overc compress the foam so when this bottoms out to this Frame we've compressed the whole gasket uh almost an
34:08
eighth of an inch so uh so I'm happy with that as far as making a
34:14
seal but the fact that we have the RTV is just uh is a bonus cuz uh I know some
34:19
people actually don't even put sealant on there
34:25
which guess technically you don't have
34:42
to okay now we're just going to check our gasket for evenness cuz when I put
34:47
the gasket on this whole the whole fan was
34:55
even
35:05
okay okay let's check away let's check the
35:25
top
37:38
okay so now I'm actually going to go through and put the locktite on so it's nice and even on the
37:46
top and it's just ready to
37:55
go
39:04
also in these aluminum uh strips what I did is I've
39:09
um they're a 2764 inch drill bits they're bigger than
39:15
the bolt because uh with those nut inserts the metal inserts for the pneumatic
39:21
cooling unit they're going to be they're not
39:26
going to be perfectly straight up and down they're going to be you know cockeyed a little bit off
39:31
center so it just helps with
39:55
alignment
42:20
now when you're toring these down we really want to focus on the nut insert um
42:27
cuz sometimes it'll start to [Music] move and that means we're at the maximum
42:34
that it can it can
42:46
take so both of those are as tight as they can uh be on the nut
42:55
insert this light get my phone out I can't
43:03
see the studio light is too
43:18
bright
43:25
okay
43:54
okay so this one I need to add another washer to that cuz as you're clamping this on this
44:00
clamping this down um stuff's going to you know flex and
44:25
change
44:45
okay excellent man that is that is in
44:54
there
45:13
okay see how the live stream is doing
45:19
okay all right so two both bars are in there we both have everything torqued down lock tied
45:27
that's all good to
45:40
go let see this is our power connection so we've got enough room for
45:47
it so this will actually get pushed up in here when we put in our uh our bottom
45:55
piece
46:24
for
46:35
all right so let's go back and look at the manual real quick got a couple of uh questions I
46:42
need to look on there for change over to the nice
46:49
microphone all right let's see
46:54
here
47:14
so this right here is the adhesive strip that I was telling you that I didn't I didn't show you on the back um this unit
47:21
it's much of the weight's up here even though the compressor is back here but this does does help stabilize it so it's
47:29
just a piece of foam with an adhesive and I just did it on top of the roof
47:35
so that's already been taken care
47:54
of
48:06
so I'm trying to look where they have the foam
48:19
piece because I don't think they show where to put the phone piece in any of the
48:24
instructions H
48:33
down yeah so it's not in
48:39
here all right let's go back to the
48:54
van okay so I am going to add one lock washer to these front
49:03
ones now that I know how much compression I
49:14
have and you got a few minutes before the Loctite actually uh hardens up
49:24
so
49:54
for
53:31
so I'm going to make a template or something I can uh Trace out like a piece of
53:36
cardboard CU I need to cut this out in the certain way so that it fits over my
53:42
aluminum
53:54
piece
54:41
Okay so we've got a piece of paper here and we're just going to make a
54:48
little little template to cut
54:54
from
56:10
if you cut too far in a template you can use a masking tape to kind of
56:15
fix what you messed up on so I cut that too wide so now I
56:23
know that's what it's supposed to
56:53
be
57:26
actually the first cut I made Might Have Been might have been
57:53
right
57:59
okay so that side is
58:07
see okay that side's perfect so we'll just measure just do
58:12
one at a time because I only got one piece of that
58:18
foam and if you have this kit you have one piece too but basically what we're doing is
58:25
we're getting getting ready to install a piece that separates the Ducks from the front and the back so the
58:34
nice thing about the pneumatic I mean the dtic RTX is that it's
58:40
already it's already ready already so it doesn't uh it doesn't there's no problem
58:47
with it having a baffle that um separates the intake and exhaust but
58:57
this one you're going to have to make your
59:19
own just curious how it looks like on this side
59:31
all right it's about the same on that side so my middle
59:42
piece all right so we got 12 12
59:49
and 12 and 58 I'll write that down
59:57
B
1:00:23
58s
1:00:35
so next what I'm doing is I'm
1:00:41
marking there's a there's like a minimum distance going
1:00:53
backwards see if I can do
1:01:04
that so what I'm checking for is there's a a piece right
1:01:12
here and this piece I want to for the foam to be in front of
1:01:23
it
1:01:48
so I would say if you do mess this up you can use a piece of XPS foam to fix it
1:03:26
okay so we got this first part cut let's see uh how it fits so right there we've got
1:03:34
it we've got the AC unit itself and then we've got the support member bar comes
1:03:39
out and then this comes down to where our wood
1:03:53
is okay
1:04:23
yeah
1:07:22
for
1:07:52
for
1:09:17
just cutting a couple more pieces of foam here
1:09:52
for
1:10:41
so obviously the left side and right side are different so I'm trying to figure out how to get
1:10:47
this in here perfectly
1:12:59
looks pretty good and the next step is we got to come in here and measure off where the
1:13:06
uh trim ring is going to close all this
1:13:13
off and we want to keep it just like maybe 16th of an inch long so then when we push this up it has a nice
1:13:21
uh seal so right
1:13:28
there right
1:13:41
there all right I'm going to cut a straight line I'll be right
1:13:52
back
1:15:53
okay that's awesome that's a that's really good good good amount of pressure being pushed on
1:15:58
that all right so that should be a really good seal no problem at
1:16:04
all now we need to get the control board
1:16:22
in
1:16:29
so this is the control board that's what it looks
1:16:44
like we'll definitely probably chop this video up later cuz I know this isn't this is insane to
1:16:51
watch this long but this is how long it takes in real
1:17:22
life
1:18:08
so we're not going to snap this in yet I just wanted to see where these wires are coming out for
1:18:14
the foam seal CU that will tell us uh pretty
1:18:22
pretty much where we have to put well I think we we can go ahead and
1:18:28
pop this
1:18:51
in
1:19:51
that
1:20:45
so this right here is as forward most as it can go so that when we put this in and out
1:20:54
we not affecting the circuit
1:21:03
board and going to have to take a little bit more of this off it's just
1:21:09
uh just sticking out too
1:21:21
much
1:21:51
for
1:24:20
okay that looks good let's go ahead and we'll tape all the insides
1:24:26
up and then so I'm probably going to do that off camera because this is a long
1:24:34
stream but uh that's pretty much the gist of it right there we've got we've got our Anderson connector
1:24:41
back here um got a nice place for it to tuck away back there on the
1:24:46
side we will have to be cognizant of where we are putting all of our screw
1:24:51
holes so that we do not drill up through our wiring harness so that'll be
1:25:00
safe there's nothing over
1:25:06
there all right so we're going to foil tape all
1:25:12
this right here so that all of our air just comes straight out we don't have any condensation going into the
1:25:18
van um and uh yeah so that is going to do it for this
1:25:26
video is pretty much it when we get to the ecoflow video we'll actually um we'll come back over here to the
1:25:33
computer and uh we'll go through something for the ecoflow
1:25:39
system um but yeah that is going to do it for this video tonight guys if you enjoy
1:25:45
the video give us a like subscribe to this channel um also wanted to check
1:25:51
wanted you guys to check check out the DIY van build cheat sheet so that is a cheat sheet over 250 curated items it's
1:25:58
all of my Amazon purchases over the past three years for the shop it's completely free to download and it's just there to
1:26:05
help you it's organized in different categories we've got solar panels fuses a lot of 8020 Hardware stuff like that
1:26:12
plumbing water pumps so get it just go to vilder hq.com click a link in the description below or
1:26:20
just go to uh this download link so when you click on it it's going to go to this page put your name email address and
1:26:27
it'll send it right to your inbox I think it'll really help you out on your DIY van build
1:26:33
journey and uh that's going to do it for tonight guys thanks so much for watching if you made it this far and um what
1:26:39
we'll do is we'll will we'll get to the rest of the uh AC install once we get to
1:26:46
the power system that's pretty much all we need to do now um yeah top of the van is pretty much completely done uh I will
1:26:52
show you how to fuse and crimp the mc4 connectors on the solar panel wires so
1:26:59
that's coming up very soon um we might actually get to that either uh tomorrow or the next day but
1:27:07
yeah if you guys um have any questions put those in the comments before below and uh I'll happy to I'll be happy to
1:27:14
answer them in a future live stream all right guys that's it for tonight we'll see you on the next
1:27:21
one [Music]
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