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64 NEW products for the "DIY Van Build Cheat Sheet" & Shop Update
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May 2, 2025
Future add-ons to the DIY Van Build Cheat Sheet! Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways we can help you: 1. If you need a vetted parts list, download our → FREE DIY Van Build Cheatsheet to help you save time and money on Van Parts and Gear. CLICK HERE: https://van-builder-hq.ck.page/846c83ab54 2. If you want to get Done-For-You Van Build help, book a → FREE Consultation with my Calendly Link. CLICK HERE: https://www.odysseycustomvans.com/ Odyssey Custom Vans: https://www.odysseycustomvans.com/
View Video Transcript
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foreign [Music]
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thank you [Music]
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thank you foreign
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[Music]
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foreign guys welcome back to the shop hope you
1:51
had a great weekend wanted to catch you guys up on what's happening in the shop uh next week some products that we've
1:57
got in and then we're going to go over the 64 items that were gonna be added to the DIY van build cheat sheet and we'll
2:05
probably do um we'll go through them pretty quickly but I wanted to show you what's coming
2:11
as far as products being added to the list there's a bunch of questions that have been asked as far as where can
2:16
people get the links and then some other items like that and if you don't know the DIY van build cheat sheet this is
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our free cheat sheet that you guys can download completely free and it's essentially an
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Excel sheet so when I do these live streams I talk a lot about products and when I do mention them I want to make
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sure that you guys get links to ones that I vetted and I use in the shop so this list which is called the DIY van
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build cheat sheet you guys can get it completely free just put your name and email address we'll have a link in the
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description below you can also go to Van builderhq.com to pick this up
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but what you're going to see is just a list that's organized with electrical components Fasteners Hardware AC kitchen
2:59
onboard Air Roofing security solar and most importantly the tools section
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and it's all these items that I've used over the past three years it's a really just quick easy way to find stuff
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without combing the whole entire internet for Van parts so you'll see the stuff that I use in the shop
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and today specifically this list it looks a little crazy but it's going
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to be nice and easy to go through because I'm going to explain a couple of the things that I've added because I really like them but you can see we've
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got about 64 that need to be put on the list those are new ones that are
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some parts that I've got in the shop and uh just really thought they'd help you out there's a couple of renergy
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components and then there's some switches and stuff like that but we're trying to try to make this live stream
3:46
as quick as possible but if we do have people watching you guys out there if you have any questions it could be
3:52
anything van related does not have to be related to the live stream we're doing tonight if you have a question ask it
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and then I'll see if I can answer it if not we'll put that into a future video
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yeah let's talk about some exciting stuff first and then we'll get into the uh the parts list of the stuff that
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we're adding and then if we have any time for some questions we'll take some questions
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so last week we got the DIY van
4:24
um trim kit are the uh it is the cnc'd
4:31
transition piece for the roof of the Ford Transit so if you go I'll show you DIY van here
4:38
in a second but we're going to be putting on the Dometic RTX 2000 on the top of this uh
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2020 Ford Transit High roof cargo van and there's corrugations in the top of
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the roof that you can have this on the Ram ProMaster you can have it uh on the Sprinter but those corrugations uh don't
4:57
allow for a really good seal on the top of the van now you can use you know sealants the
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rubber foam that comes with it the gasket kits but they're not the best solution so the best solution that I use
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is from DIY van I use these they're just CNC cut out
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uh I call them templates they're like a transition piece but they also make them
5:24
for the max fan so if you want to have a nice smooth flat surface to mount your max fan too you can get this in a maxman
5:31
version but what they do is they see and see this piece and I don't know if you
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guys can see but it's kind of it's flat on top and then it's uh has it has this Crown
5:43
right here there you go so it has this Crown right here
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and then these are the corrugations on the roof of the Ford Transit so what it does is it's going to perfectly Center
5:57
this onto your van and create this really nice flat surface
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so there's a specific sealant that you're going to use here I believe I'm going to be using 3M
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window weld for this bottom surface and so that window weld is going to go on here and don't worry there's going to be
6:14
a full tutorial in how I install this uh the Dometic RTX 2000 fan next week
6:22
but I need to get this in so I can find out exactly where I needed to cut but
6:27
the benefit of having this is you're going to be able to position it and kind of move it around
6:34
and find out just exactly where you want this in the van
6:39
uh what's what makes this really important I'm going to go to the drawing tab to show you why
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something like this would be really important first let me just go to DIY van DIY van
6:52
so I can show you guys what this is so if we hop on over here diyvan.com
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no affiliation um I'm just showing you guys really good products that are makes building a van
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very easy and professional so this is the product so the medic RTX 2000 air conditioner
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adapter and there's a bunch of options down here
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what's really nice is if you have any question the guys at DIY van they're very quick to hop on the phone call to
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answer any questions you guys will have and it's easy to work with um
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but there's a bunch of options here so if you have any questions call them
7:38
but I'm going to try to explain what I did so the adapter piece that I have is this
7:44
looks like this and let's see if they got any other photos
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there we go perfect uh let's look at this one
8:06
hey go dude I'm doing well uh yeah build is going well because we've we've got Parts in the uh you'll be excited the
8:15
hold on get distracted here I got a show go and do this uh
8:24
so check it out go and do the modification is finished
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and I just got this freshly powder coated I got this back uh last week
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so uh yeah check that out this is where that um uh isotherm Cruise 130 fridges going
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into and if you remember I had to cut this and so I chopped it all up and then I
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had the powder coaters re-powder coat this so it's it now matches the whole interior of the
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van and it's going to look really nice so I'm excited to put that in there but uh
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yeah that's the the finished product of uh getting that isotherm Cruise 130 fridge
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put into that little cabinet okay back to the uh DIY van
9:15
so if you guys can see right here this is the Dometic RTX 2000 air conditioner
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flipped upside down and there's two pieces right here so
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these two layers are these two pieces so you have this which mounts in the
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corrugations on the roof and then you have this foam gasket right here and you can get this in different
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and varying thick uh various thicknesses so for example if you come over here
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you've got uh one inch 0.75.5 and a half so this is the half
9:54
and I think it's going to work for me um
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but what's nice about this is uh I wonder if I had a template let's
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see here and we'll get to that second what's nice
10:12
about this is you're going to have a secure seal for the foundation it's going to be flat and then if you need to
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increase your height of your AC unit when you increase the height of your AC
10:26
unit it's going to increase the clearance inside your van so if you needed the vents lower you'd get the
10:33
half inch and if you needed to move it up because of your ceiling for some reason
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maybe it's it's too high then you'd get a different gasket
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but if you wanted to know how to specifically install that
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you'll just go to uh DIY van and they have a video so right here
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they have a video where they'll show you exactly how this is put together
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and yeah so the last thing that I got is the
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interior interior bezel black and so what I'm going to do with this
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this piece right here you guys will find this this is hilarious
11:21
So when you buy the Dometic RTX 2000 you're going to get a trim kit you're
11:27
gonna have to buy the electrical kit and if you guys miss my video from about two weeks ago I talked about what you don't
11:33
get in the kit and uh
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see if I can with my videos not bright enough here
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see let's try that um but this is hilarious
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so this is the interior trim piece
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that is supposed to make the inside of the RTX 2000 look really nice in your van
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and uh this is what they want you to put in your van now there's there's uh to my
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knowledge there's not really any reason for this over here on these two sides
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um but look how thick it is so a DIY van did is they gave you this
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nice Super Low Pro trim ring just to finish it off
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and essentially it's the same it's going to trim out so what they did
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is they put the holes they've if you want to do the bolts
12:46
through you can still use this or you could put the bolts ignore this you're not going to use this I'm just showing
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you I'm just showing you this as a reference so they made it to where these holes are
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the same so as far as accessibility to bolting the unit in
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you can do it from this trim ring but what I'm going to do is let me put this back up
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hold on bear with me
13:25
I have the adventure wagging kit and so I have a bamboo ceiling panel
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I want to keep nice that's the whole point of the kit it's really nice so this is my ceiling panel for the rear
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of the van so we've got two bars that come across here and these are the two cross member
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bars so if you guys have already installed like a Max fan in your in your van
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these two cross members in the back you'll remember this is that 14 by 14 inch area that you're going to cut out
13:57
for your max pan so that's kind of where this is um
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so what I'm going to be doing is this panel
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this the lights are going to be in the rear and then up here we're going to have a trim piece
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so you got you'll find this out next week when we get into the installation of the air conditioning unit
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um but I can't it's not a big problem but I came up with an issue uh
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with the adventure wagon intersecting with the opening for the Dometic
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uh the opening for the Dometic RTX 2000 is about 15 and a half inches which is
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not a big deal because we got 14 in that um that inch and a half we can split
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into three quarters and three quarters but uh you have to remember the adventure
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wagon kit can't be moved so down here at the very bottom there's a piece of L track
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so this uh trim ring is going to be sitting
15:07
essentially flush with the the overlap of the L track
15:14
so it's going to look something it's gonna look something like that which that'll be okay it'll look good
15:22
it's just it's more forward than anticipated
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but it's going to be forward like that and then the piece of L track that holds this in it'll be right here
15:34
so it'll be four most and what I'll have to do is instead of putting it exactly in between
15:41
the two roof supports and taking three quarters and three
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quarters I'm probably going to move this as back as far as I can and I'll have to probably cut about an
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inch off of this rear support back here but remember that's it's just cutting off this back side
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but we'll save that for the next week's video um but essentially
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this is the trim ring
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the kit and that kind of ties into everything in the van the Dometic vent and display everything
16:20
right here is black so it'll look nice and professional okay so that's update for the parts for
16:28
the Dometic AC we've got the isothermic Cruise 130 fridge
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kitchen Galley it's powder coated good to go
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um let's see what was the next thing I was going to tell you guys we got one more thing in the shop where
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did it go oh yeah we've got our
16:56
uh package from overseas
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so this is for our our rear
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door panel so Rover Vans Sills
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all the only um rear door panel organization kit that I know of
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and we're going to be installing this uh
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probably will be next week it's probably going to be maybe two weeks
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so these are the moon organizers I think that's the name of them and on the back door the Ford Transit you can have an
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upper one a middle one and a lower one the upper one we have an adventure wagon
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upholstered piece that's going to be glued on the middle section is this and then the bottom section I left open
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because it has a speaker system and we don't want to cover that up
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so this check it out really cool look at that this
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organization panel system for the back of the van so you put this in the back door
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and actually okay let me spin this around hold on
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we're going for a ride
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there you go
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oh yeah Nick I I feel you that's uh it was hard to uh
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I was gonna go with the DIY van panels from uh
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Titan Vans and try to work on that kit um AVC rig also makes a a system
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um but yeah it's tough in your own panels because you're kind of doing the templating process from from scratch so
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I definitely feel you on that even though I have a lot of bolt-in parts
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there's a lot of templing templating that I still do when I do work on these Vans
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um so check this out guys this just goes right in here
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see right there and uh it gives you nice organization so down here we they do
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make one for this bottom piece but this is like one of the fully loaded vans so this is a this is already this
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speaker works and everything so I'm not gonna we've got it out or anything also
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this down here is hard if you were putting stuff in the bottom of the van you may not want this to get beat up by
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bikes and equipment so it's just nice to keep this plastic in my opinion but this is a good organization you can
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use this when you're in the bed so for example you're in the bed you have Nets here to put like jackets and clothes and
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stuff and each person has kind of their side they do make one for the very top uh
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but unless you're inside the van I mean that's that's pretty high up so we're just going with a upholstered piece from
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Adventure wagon but yeah this uh this is pretty cool
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so we got that to look forward to
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all right let's get to uh the point of the live stream
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let's get to the list real quick
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okay we're hopping right in first thing we're going to talk about are a couple of the cable lugs for the van
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and as I go through here there's two things to remember whenever you're buying cable lugs
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remember that the inside diameter is something to not mess up on
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so 5 16 which is the smaller hole is typically for the batteries
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now this is in my way
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so the 5 16th is usually for the battery terminals that's the smaller hole I know this is
21:40
the fatter lug but the whole diameter and then when you get to the fuse panel
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so for example anything like this distribution block the inputs to these are typically
21:54
3 8. so whenever you're on Amazon and you're looking at these parts
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you know the 5 16th um in the 3 8 just make sure that the drop
22:06
down here you get your correct wire gauge size as well as the ring
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uh diameter you want that to be correct so you get
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the safest connection that you can possibly have
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this one company that I'll put on the list they're called sell term
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they're UL tested and approved or they say they are
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um and it's stamped on here so in a perfect world if you can get UL
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listed items for your van that is just my personal
22:48
that's what I would I would do the next thing we got is the heat shrink tube
22:54
and when you do the heat shrink tube you want to make sure that your mindful of the diameter
23:02
and how it's going to go on your lug and if you want to know how to find that out we just did a pass video I'm talking
23:08
about the off-grid power system and I talk about referencing a chart and uh
23:16
finding out how to measure the heat shrink
23:22
um let's see here
23:28
so next up we'll be talking about this in the
23:33
future video when we start putting the system together but this is a resistor
23:39
and this is used to pre-charge the inverter
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and that's just so you don't have a uh
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a spike when you connect the the whole entire battery system to it
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and so will prowse so he's on YouTube let me see if I can pull
24:03
up him real quick he explains it really well
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so if you've seen him on YouTube you can just type in a pre-charge resistor he
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talks about it a lot in his videos and he'll explain the process of how to do that when I get to actually using it
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just wait for that to come out and then I can it'll be from it'll be me teaching you guys how to do
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that
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next thing that we put on the list are we did a bunch of Mega fuses so we're
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going to be adding these Mega fuses and these are the ones that we're using on the victron lynx distributor box
24:55
next up we have the uh dual Pro
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breaker and this is for the solar panels on the roof so this is not the inline
25:06
fuse that you would use going from the solar panel to this the inline views you want to have by the
25:14
panel itself on the positive side but this is where you're going to be able to disconnect it and in the event that you
25:20
had a that you needed to protect that wire
25:27
you can do two things this allows you to protect it when it's going before it
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goes into the charge controller as well as cut it off and you can't use just a
25:39
one you can't just do one fuse on the positive leg because it's possible that it can shorten backfeed on the negative
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and so that's why this setup is used what's interesting is if you go on
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YouTube and you watch a lot of DIY builds most people will not put this additional item into their
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uh solar system they're just going to
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direct wire it to the charge controller and they may fuse it but this is best
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practice explores.life explains why he decided to
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use this and he's the one that I picked up picked this up from
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so next we have
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so we have our Wendy Nation cable so this is our welding wire so we're using this for our battery terminals and I
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like windy Nation because I think the quality is really good and not only that but they have multiple
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options so you can get four odd biggest four out you can have 10 feet of black
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or red combined 20 feet 50 feet 100 feet
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so whatever you really need to start your build you don't have to buy a ton you can just get exactly what you need
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and you can also do one black and red just so it's easier to identify when you're wiring it and
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uh it's always in stock it usually gets like for me I get it here tomorrow so
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really convenient
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next we'll talk about some under cabinet lighting so this company e shine has a
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hand wave activated under cabinet LED and so I'm going to be using this underneath the metal
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storage boxes so let me see if I can show you that
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so these are from Flatline vanco uh there's solid aluminum I mean that's
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solid they're aluminum and this is going to have you can see it's nice and light
27:55
this is going to have bamboo doors on it and if you look on top you see all those little slits uh you can bolt this into L
28:04
track so it's technically made for a sprinter the only difference is the
28:11
angle so in a sprinter it's going to be flat and in transit it's going to be actually
28:19
angled in like this just a little bit and I actually like the way it looks
28:25
so this instead of like this is kind of opened up like that and I'm going to put that led
28:32
back into here and so
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it's going to give you some additional Lighting in the bed area as well as the cargo area
28:45
but it's just hand activated so you can just one wave wave your hand over it with this little sensor
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it's 12 volt so all you do is just splice this and put it in there
28:57
um one thing I'm very picky about is the color temperature so this is going to be
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3000 Kelvin so if you guys don't know anything about color temperature Kelvin is color
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temperature is how you have like Bluer bulbs or warmer bulbs
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um here let's just look it up
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so you just type in kelvin light scale and then you can see like light bulbs pop up
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and uh actually that chart is not right
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that's weird um there you go
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so right here we're in the 3000 so we got the warmer light so if you go over
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here you're going to have more blue so it goes more orange Lower Blue is higher
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closer to a daylight temperature which is like 6 500 Kelvin
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um but if you can match them it's kind of an OCD thing but if you can match them
30:03
it just makes it look much more of a professional job when you're building a van
30:10
um next we're going to go into this USB charge socket most USB sockets
30:17
do not give you enough juice to actually charge like a MacBook Pro
30:23
and so I'm adding this to the list because this we use this for Thomas's van and it's going to give us enough
30:28
watts to where we can actually charge a MacBook Pro or an iPad and then
30:35
you also have this USB at the bottom for a quick charging as well
30:47
a couple more uh electrical items we have a terminal block fuse
30:53
or fuse block terminal and this is what's going to go in two different areas we have
31:00
the addition to our victron leaks distributor so this is going to go for power and all like the LED lights and
31:06
the USB Outlets and then we have one coming off of the main battery
31:13
and we can use that as a backup to uh to protect our batteries from our
31:18
distribution block now when you buy this
31:23
um it's going to you're going to have the terminal Mount but you're going to have to go back and buy
31:30
the actual fuse itself some of these listings have it some
31:36
don't I'm gonna try to find the one that has it combined but I'll probably put both of them in there as well
31:45
let's see next we have
31:52
got our Blue Sea Systems blade fuse block the 12 circuit
32:00
this one's really nice because it has both the positive and negative input some of these you got to be careful
32:05
because when you buy them they do not have the negative terminal at the top so
32:10
you have to have a separate terminal to put all the negatives to that's one thing to look forward to look
32:18
out for the next thing is you need to make sure this has a plastic cover on top and that just protects it from you
32:24
know getting hit or the wires accidentally shorted or the fuse is damaged but also it's going to give you
32:29
the ability to put the labels on there so you actually know what's that circuit
32:34
is identified as and then we have the blade
32:43
they make a fuse block and so I use these again it's Overkill
32:49
you know you don't have to have this covered in an ignition protected but I do this because I really like how strong
32:55
it is I mount this to the back of the drive like underneath the driver's seat it's really solid the
33:01
plastic cover helps it from not getting kicked by rear passengers and their feet the mega fuse is going to give you
33:08
enough current protection capacity for you know pulling 50 amps or 100 amps you
33:14
have select some multiple fuses so this is a really good option so we're going to be adding that to the list as well
33:23
then we're just going to keep on trucking if you guys want a uh a cooling
33:29
fan the company AC Infinity makes these really nice cooling fans they're 12
33:36
volts and you can adjust them but what I do is I like how they have this Grille and the
33:42
fan the fan can be reversible but if you need to cool your battery compartment this is a really stylish way
33:49
to do it and the system that I use to control it is this digital thermostat
33:55
control board it looks very complicated it's very simple you just have your inputs to the fan
34:02
your inputs to the power and then right here where it says like 74 degrees you
34:07
can dial it into where you want it to come on and then it's also where you want it to
34:13
turn off and that way when if your battery compartment can't breathe enough you can have something cycling on and
34:19
off while you're not in the van or when you're driving
34:24
and it's really just an emergency backup the the power system behind me this is
34:30
going to be passively cooled the way that I have it designed
34:35
but if you were in so for example Thomas's van we have two of these in his van because his power system uh we had
34:43
so little space to pack everything and I needed something to exchange that air
34:49
especially when he turned on his inverter so we put we put this system in
34:58
if you guys are wanting to put in a ins like an interior shower you'll
35:04
actually have a full shower system but maybe you have like a drain pan setup kind of like I do and you want to be
35:10
using your faucet to run the shower wand but you don't want to do it to where you're always having to connect and
35:16
disconnect all the time I found this system and allows you to just screw the hose on whenever you want
35:23
to and then turn the hose wand on and it also has an on and off switch
35:30
it looks like it's all metal it is completely plastic but uh it's for 25 bucks I think it's a good
35:38
option I'm going to be using this uh in the van
35:45
so check this out these couplers won't work with a sink
35:50
you're going to have to have another adapter but when we get to the plumbing part of the van Builder I'm doing right now I'll talk about all this but I
35:57
wanted to show you this product if currently you're looking for something like this
36:06
next we have something I think is really cool and
36:11
it's hard to find some good quality push button switches 12 volts that also have
36:17
the LED light with different colors the different colors can stand for you
36:24
know different parts of the system for example the blue I use for water pumps so if you
36:30
wanted to turn on the water pump your switch is blue and that way you know that it's your water pump the red one is
36:37
good for like rear nighttime lighting for the rear cargo area and then for interior lights you can use
36:44
white just for interior lights if you had like an Amber fog light for your porch area
36:50
some people like to use those as like a bug Light then they also have the Amber
36:55
but these switches if you look they're 7 8 of an inch so they're very chunky
37:01
um kind of about the size of your thumb but they have a really good mounting
37:06
setup a very good positive touch like when you touch them it feels like a very
37:11
nice piece of hardware so I'm going to be using these on the van as well the cool thing is you can
37:17
also get it anodized black so I'm going to use the anodized black for the
37:23
kitchen Galley over here when I get it finished up but we'll be adding those to the list as
37:30
well if you guys are looking for some heavy duty drawer slides uh
37:37
aloe Shang I guess is how you pronounce that I know these names are crazy but
37:43
one thing that's nice about me vetting these products is uh I don't want to put anything in a van that's cheap so if I'm
37:51
showing you this it's something that I've actually bought and it's it's very stable so this company makes these drawer
37:59
slides you can get one with the lock or without I'd always go for the lock and then they have a chart on the
38:06
different links that they have but this is one company and then I'll be putting in another company
38:12
later there was a one I ordered last year I gotta find and I've used it works great
38:20
let's talk about sound deadening so there's two actually three systems that I use one's the kill map
38:27
this is the 50 mil version so it's it's pretty thin but this is typically used for the flooring not the size of the van
38:35
the current van that I have is has the adventure wagon interior conversion kit so with that kit they already include
38:41
all the sound deadening for you for the walls but they don't do it for the floor the floor is something that uh
38:51
a lot of people tend to overlook as far as sound bending but really if you think about it road noise is coming from the
38:56
road up through the van so if you can sound dead in your floor that's really going to be the best bang
39:03
for buck as far as getting that that noise quietened down for when you're
39:08
driving
39:15
um there's also some thicker foam that you can use and this
39:22
company uh this is closed cell foam heat insulation
39:29
mat and this uh
39:35
that's hilarious I'm trying to think [Laughter] where I was going to use this in the van
39:41
um I typically buy this to sound deaden I think I'm going to be using this on the
39:48
near the acrylic piece that closes up the power system I think
39:53
that's what I'm using this for um but the thicker foam
40:01
yeah I think that's what I'm gonna use it for don't you guys love live streams you get
40:07
to see the unscripted Nick all right moving on down we have
40:14
um here we go heater vents so it took me a while to
40:21
find this vent because the Webasto the heater Outlet hose is specifically 90 millimeters and
40:29
that's very big the systems I use with the Chinese diesel heaters in the past are very small not big at all
40:37
and I just didn't realize that the pasta was so big so I found one that I like
40:44
and it's pretty good quality now the benefit of this one that I got is this face comes off you can bolt it
40:52
on and then you can click on the vent and the vent is rotatable you can change the direction of it so that's why I
40:58
chose this one um next up we have
41:05
van Essentials so if you can buy something through
41:10
Amazon you guys know it's just very convenient even though you get it from a manufacturer it's just
41:16
be able to put everything in one order it's very convenient not only for you know us at home but also business
41:23
owners so this is perfect and I think the quality is
41:29
okay it's good quality um but this is Van Essentials insulated
41:35
blackout bunk window cover and it's really cool because it's made
41:41
for the awning the 33 inch by 10 inch awning bunk style window
41:46
not many people use that window it's cool that you can actually get the insulated covers from Amazon
41:54
and in a past live stream I actually showed you guys uh actually a YouTube short that I did
42:00
shows me shows you I can't talk shows me installing this into the back
42:05
of the fan uh skipped over this but they also have
42:12
the 90 millimeter ducting hose for the heater so that's going to be added to the to the list
42:20
and if you guys have any of the Flatline vanco components and you maybe wanted to add the same drawer latches to
42:27
a custom system or like a custom drawer system that you're putting in the van I found a pretty much a duplicate
42:35
compression latch so this company right here is is the exact same latch that that
42:42
Flatline vanco is using right now so I'll put that on the list
42:48
uh we're doing good I'm gonna skip over just a couple things that are not that important
42:53
uh some lighting that I have already talked about and I'm gonna go
43:00
okay let's skip on down um I think I already talked about these storage Nets if you guys are looking for
43:06
storage nets for the van we use this in Thomas's van these are these things are nice they're kind of like you know the
43:11
stuff you see on like airplanes or buses um they're good quality so we put four
43:18
of those in his van uh we actually installed this uh we
43:24
bought an Amazon it's called level mate Pro Connects to his iPhone and allows
43:30
him to be able to see the level of his van so when you're parking your van you know you don't want your bed to be
43:35
crooked so this level mate Pro lets you drive you go over your leveling blocks or you
43:43
can have like an inflatable bladder to actually lift the van up that's not included with this kit but this is the
43:49
tool that's going to allow you to uh see where you need to finally Park them
43:55
in and for 150 bucks I think it works great it's very simple you just
44:01
literally Mount this box on a flat surface arrows point up and a specific
44:08
part of the van and it's a I mean for something that connects to
44:13
your phone it's pretty cool all right Trucking away here
44:20
um we're gonna be updating some of these solar components on the DIY van build cheat sheet
44:26
um guys if you're just tuning in we're talking about the DIY van build cheat sheet add-ons so I created the DIY van
44:33
build cheat sheet and it's a curated list of all the products on Amazon so we've been going through these curated
44:39
products uh every now and then I do an update and I add a whole bunch of stuff onto this list that's what we're doing
44:44
right now if you want to go ahead and get the list that has the current 250
44:50
items on it all you have to do is go to vanbuilderhq.com or click in the link in
44:55
the description below put your name and email address it's going to come straight your inbox it's completely free so check that out that's
45:02
what we're talking about right now so a lot of solar components that'll be updated
45:08
um let's see what else this is really important too this will
45:15
be in the tools section possibly um
45:21
oh yeah so Nick I'm going to be working on these next week there's 64 of these products that I put
45:27
on there and I need to make every time I update the list I do a I have to create a new custom link so it takes a minute
45:34
but next week I'm going to go through and
45:39
get all these links uh put them back in the list because one thing I need to do is this list
45:45
uh I may add another category or two just to make it easier to to run through
45:55
um and yeah love to have your guys feedback on that but yeah that's the plan because this
46:00
special link has to be updated because I definitely want you guys going to that link
46:06
helps us out helps support the channel and keeps everything nice and organized so yes next week I'll be putting it on
46:14
there um oh go and do I'm very glad very happy to hear that
46:21
very happy to hear that you guys like this sheet let's see here next week
46:27
hold on a second be more specific end of
46:33
next week for up date
46:52
okay um yeah because what's what's cool is I'm starting to kind of figure out how I
46:58
want to lay that list out better for example this is uh these are solar
47:04
connectors with uh the spanner tool this this stuff is this thing is really cool
47:09
it's 12 bucks and it I don't have to
47:16
so in the past what I did like for example on Thomas's van I bought some pre
47:22
pre-crimped connections that were like two feet four feet and I didn't like how I had to like
47:28
Bunch them up in zip time and organize them on the roof so when we did his so when we did his uh
47:36
we added 200 more watts of solar to the roof of his van I went with this type of setup and then
47:42
each one of my wires was a custom run it was perfect you know the connector went right exactly where I wanted to and it
47:48
was it was much more a very neat job the problem is you have to make sure
47:55
that you're doing this correctly and um because it the male connector looks like
48:03
it it's how do I explain this the the female pin
48:10
I think goes into male connector and the metal pan goes in the Fimo connector it's it's it's not what you would
48:16
intuitively think it's it's it's backwards so hopefully when I do this next time
48:21
for this van this current build we'll do a little tutorial on how to install this but it's just cool you can get something
48:28
that's very helpful for you know 12 bucks on Amazon and it is it's good quality that's good
48:35
all right we're trekking through here um the center punch I'm not sure if it's on
48:41
here but I use the center punch on the van all the time to kind of Mark places before I drill them out
48:46
it's 12 bucks and this is a very heavy duty one so I like this we're gonna put that one on there
48:53
again let's see oh this is a better windy Nation ad so
48:58
for windy Nation for example you guys can see here you've got five feet black and red 10 feet black and red 50 200
49:06
feet uh so winning Nation again is what I
49:11
recommend they also have a chart here
49:21
let's see let me back up yeah winning Nation that's good all right we're in the last paid let's see
49:27
this is the last page yep here your last page um boom
49:36
so the last page we have die core this is the lap sealant so this is what
49:42
you would use to seal up your um Max fan or the the medic that I'm
49:49
putting in and because I'm OCD as far as how everything looks it comes it's not white
49:55
it comes in the black tube so it's it's black dicor self leveling lap sealant
50:04
um again it doesn't have to be black but I like that
50:10
the waterproof glands this is another company I couldn't find the old
50:17
link needs to be updated this is the new company that I got the product from so guys 15 bucks you've got all the
50:24
waterproof connectors you need you can use from the bottom of the van the roof I like these for doing roof penetrations
50:32
with wires because instead of pulling five wires at a time if you ever
50:38
needed to fix one you'd have to take all five wires remove them this way you can just work in one individual wire at
50:45
a time or at least that's my philosophy
50:50
uh all right how much we got left okay just a few this I don't think I have on the list
50:56
yet so this is a buck boost so it can it's a converter and what it does is it
51:02
steps up your voltage depending on what you're trying to get out of it so for
51:08
example if you're trying to take your 12 volts power system and you're trying to step it up to
51:15
15 volts but that 15 volts maybe you need it at 8 amps 20 amps or 25 amps you
51:22
can wire one of these in and it's going to boost it's going to boost up your your wattage
51:31
um and your voltage or is it whatever you need you can find this converter for your van
51:38
so for example uh
51:43
you know there might be I'm trying to think
51:49
there might be like a router or something like that something you're trying to convert from like a wall outlet that goes through a Transformer
51:56
so like maybe a Wi-Fi connector or booster or something like that you would use one of these boxes so that
52:03
it can be dedicated uh you can have dedicated wiring in your
52:09
van and you don't have to keep inverting it for example you can do away
52:15
with the house or household Transformer and then do a direct wire according to
52:21
what voltage needs so like if you had like a a router you know Wi-Fi stuff like that's what we
52:29
use have used it for in the past
52:35
and then we went with the uh a couple of ARB accessories I'm just put in here
52:40
because this is what we bought for Thomas's van this bag is really really nice it's 104 and you would think well
52:45
that's kind of crazy but I'm telling you it's a very very well made bag it's cool it's got a little topo map on it it's
52:52
from ARB it's where all your recovery uh tie downs and stuff like that go but
52:57
we'll be used it for Thomas's van is his tank inflating um or his bags that inflate the bottom
53:04
of his tires to level his van or stored in this bag and then not only do we do that but we
53:10
actually put in his uh onboard air compressor hose in the bag
53:16
as well so that he can inflate his tires so that whole kit fits in that bag and it just looks really cool
53:24
all right we are pretty much oh wait here we go a couple more things
53:29
and feel free to ask any questions guys it doesn't have to be related to this little list update
53:35
um yeah I'm just trying to knock this out before we uh
53:40
get done with the week and okay here we go we got renergy accessory
53:46
this is really nice so the adapter the mc4 adapter kit that I showed you
53:53
that was really nice to have this is what would supplement with it so you would have your connectors that
54:00
you can customize but when you buy this kit typical typically the solar panels will not come with all this hardware and
54:06
you need to buy this separately if you buy a registry kit they usually can combine them into a big order but if
54:13
you already have solar panels and you need your Z brackets your wiring for
54:19
your battery terminals your branch adapters stuff like that this Kit's 67 bucks and it's enough to usually do
54:26
about a 200 watt capacity system but again it's you know you can get it
54:33
all from Amazon so it's just really convenient uh let's see what do I have left to show
54:40
you all right I just got like two more things here and then we are pretty much
54:46
done uh okay we talked about that yeah we got two things
54:51
one is this uh renergy solar charge controller is just
54:57
a 20 amp super simple this is a very basic unit it does have this rs485
55:03
connector that you can connect a Bluetooth adapter to it if you wanted to look at it on your phone but
55:09
this is what we use to manage the 200 Watts that we added to Thomas's van and it's nothing nothing fancy it just it
55:16
does the job it's a good price and it has the ability to upgrade if you
55:24
wanted to you know check it out on your phone type of thing um
55:29
and then last but not least I'll get right to your question go and do in one second this is the solar panels I'm probably
55:36
going to have to go with on the current build because the layout of the roof is
55:42
really challenging for me Adventure wagon when you buy from a venture wagon the
55:49
you request if you want the fan in the front or the back and so they pre-cut
55:54
the panel so that you know it's just really easy to put in
56:00
however you know they don't know what's on your roof or take that into considerations that part of the kit
56:06
so with the max fan up front and the Dometic in the back I'm gonna have to
56:12
play a game of Tetris trying to figure out how to get as much solar on the roof but I have a plan and you guys will kind
56:20
of see that coming forward um all right go and do let me get to
56:25
your questions real quick oh yeah by the way that is it for the updates uh so I'll be working on that next week I'll
56:32
give you guys a live stream update let you know that the links are live and you guys can go in there purchase those links again I really
56:39
appreciate it helps out the channel and um and hope that list continues to help you guys out if you have any uh
56:47
questions or any comments on how the list is kind of going you know I'd love to hear that feedback on the live
56:53
streams but that's it for this so let's go to go and do this question what we got uh for
56:59
wiring 12 lights and switches do you use black and red wires insulated together or do you run the red and black
57:06
separately um
57:15
I don't want to say it depends uh here I'll draw it that'll be easy way to
57:20
do it so if I were you what I would do
57:25
oh I gotta get my draw pad ready okay and Thomas's van his
57:33
LED lights in the roof those I hand soldered
57:39
and so that was just like a bunch of red you know the positive cables and then
57:44
like a a bunch of blacks on like the tail end so they were kind of separate
57:50
um for you what I would say is I would just keep it simple and then just just run one wire at a time to each light and
57:58
then gather all those and then bring them to your uh your fuse panel let me see if I can
58:07
while that other thing's loading up let me pull up this fuse block
58:15
where to put it
58:29
all right we'll have to get that some other time but I will be able to draw this out for you so let's go to
58:37
our notes okay here we go
58:44
all right all right let's get a new pad open nope
58:50
nope nope okay
58:57
so I uh so you have 12 lights and switches
59:03
12 lights and switches so if we had your lights up here let's
59:09
just uh okay so these are say these are 12
59:16
lights we'll just do four so you're gonna have your lights
59:35
uh those look like lights um
59:46
so those are your lights and 12 volts what I would do is
59:53
so you're going to come down
59:59
we're gonna hear the fireworks Nova Nova come here
1:00:22
so you guys can tell this is this is a real live stream we got we got Fourth of July fireworks anyway
1:00:28
um okay you got your four lights and then you're gonna have your four wires
1:00:35
so this is the simple way to do it you can go through and connect these in the
1:00:42
uh the ceiling so I guess quickly if you could are you wearing these in the ceiling or
1:00:49
are you kind of pre-wiring them before you're putting the panels up I guess would be a question
1:00:55
there's not really a wrong way to do it it has more to do with um
1:01:02
how much you want to okay let's see I'm trying to figure out answer this question
1:01:10
you can wire each one individually no problem but if you wanted to uh have all of them
1:01:18
like on one circuit as long as you don't load up the circuit more than it's protected and more that
1:01:25
the wire gauge can handle then um oh thank you so much
1:01:32
no but you got dog treats in here [Laughter]
1:01:42
yeah she hates the fireworks um
1:01:49
so there's a couple rules we'll just we'll put out real quick so one you don't want
1:01:56
to overload man I can write tonight
1:02:07
you don't want to overload The Wire
1:02:13
so that's the first thing you got to make sure that your wire gauge can withstand how many how much how many
1:02:19
watts are coming out of your lights the LED lights your you've got a long way to go like even if
1:02:24
you use like an 18 gauge wire so you don't want to overload The Wire
1:02:31
and then next would be overloading
1:02:36
the circuit
1:02:46
really hard to write on today um so don't overload the wire don't overload the circuit
1:02:54
and I think actually there's that's the two things if you don't if you do that
1:03:00
you're fine now when you take all these wires what
1:03:05
you can do is I'm going to erase this first one
1:03:16
so you can bring all these wires to your
1:03:21
okay this is your this is your fuse panel
1:03:31
so you're gonna have your negative up here typically and then each one of these are going to
1:03:38
be positive so
1:03:45
and I'm actually going to do this in the van later so if you miss it here
1:03:50
it's okay just come back because we'll be talking about it when I wire the switches in the van
1:03:56
but here's your fuse panel and essentially what's happening is you're going to have uh the Blue Sea
1:04:04
Systems one that I have is is positive negative on top but it's positive around here on the bottom
1:04:10
and so all I have to do is bring my positive wire in for the
1:04:17
circuit and then I just um I hate Crossing wires when I'm doing
1:04:24
tutorials and then that's going to go to the positive and you know it's possible that
1:04:30
the positive there's like a bunch of them right here so essentially all these
1:04:36
black wire is going to go towards the right here
1:04:43
so it doesn't really matter if it happens in your ceiling or down here
1:04:50
that's more of you know what you want to kind of put up with as far as wiring goes
1:04:56
but for LED lighting it's uh
1:05:02
if it's as long as it's LED it's much simpler because the current is just so
1:05:07
little that um I mean it's not really crazy dangerous
1:05:12
or anything like that but so you said it says the ceiling and
1:05:18
it's going to be a two strip light so what you can do is let's just let's
1:05:23
erase one of these so imagine these are your two strips
1:05:34
[Music] I'm gonna try to get it
1:05:40
I'm trying to do some mind reading here okay
1:05:49
this is your LED strip and I'm breaking this into two so don't worry
1:05:55
this is going to be as two first and then I'll we can combine it into one
1:06:00
um so
1:06:07
here we go we got some Led strips
1:06:15
okay so those are our two LED strips and we're just simply connecting them
1:06:24
to our fuse now obviously this would make them stay on the whole entire time
1:06:29
and there's no switch
1:06:35
so the switch we could put here
1:06:43
and then that way we can break the circuit and control those two lights
1:06:48
um now if you wanted to wire these together
1:06:53
then you could just The Next Step would be wiring them together I wish I could copy this and
1:07:00
it's fine we'll do it some other time so if you wanted to combine them
1:07:05
then we wouldn't need this anymore
1:07:13
okay and then we've got so we only have one circuit that's controlling them
1:07:23
this would still be your switch right there
1:07:30
and then really you could just uh connect them up here
1:07:37
so you could have your positive I mean you're negative and then you can have your positive
1:07:47
like that
1:07:55
so remember as long as the gauge so let's just say uh like 18
1:08:03
well I don't know how powerful these lights are but anyway make sure your wiring is correct
1:08:09
for the amount of Watts or the power that these are consuming which won't be that much I mean I can't imagine that
1:08:16
the fuse is going to be more than five amps
1:08:21
um or something like that but this right here is how you're going
1:08:27
to be able to control it on and off
1:08:33
as well as dimmit but be very careful some LEDs are not dimmable you need to
1:08:40
make sure if you do want to dim those lights you need to make sure that they are able to be
1:08:46
dimmed um
1:08:52
and that's pretty much it it's uh it's not too yeah that's I wouldn't say that's too too hard but you can wire
1:08:58
them in the ceiling you know you don't have to do two individual wire runs you don't
1:09:05
have to do that um you can if you want to if it makes you
1:09:11
feel better that you know you kind of wire them together here and you know where both of them are coming from but you don't you don't have to do that
1:09:19
now with higher amperage and stuff you can't you can't do this like short run
1:09:24
then a long run um I would advise that
1:09:29
all right go and do did that help or did that make it more confusing
1:09:37
I'm planning on doing 12 volt tutorials with different wire sizing in the future because I know a lot of people have been
1:09:42
asking questions like that um because if you've never done it before it can be challenging to kind of
1:09:49
figure out you know is it is it safe to do like a short run and then like a long run back to the fuse panel is that okay
1:09:56
so for low voltage low current applications like LED lights I'd say yes
1:10:02
you're okay but when you get into the bigger Power Systems um you have to be more careful because your
1:10:09
your current is is much stronger
1:10:18
yeah so yeah let me know if it helps um I'm going to wrap it up here in about
1:10:25
nine minutes so if you guys have any other questions uh anything about like 12 volt or if you
1:10:32
have any questions on the DIY van build cheat sheet for example
1:10:38
go ahead and check it out um all right let's see let's see so the red positive is the
1:10:45
only wire that needs to be to this switch
1:10:50
yes um yeah because you're just uh you're just uh
1:10:55
breaking the circuit right there but you just need to uh
1:11:02
you do need to wire they need they need to both come back so yes on your your question
1:11:08
but they both need to come back to the fuse panel so make sure that you're positive
1:11:13
right here you know make sure that's fused
1:11:18
and then make sure that your negative comes back to the terminal so as long as this
1:11:25
is a complete set up you're good
1:11:30
you don't want this black wire going over somewhere else and not to
1:11:35
uh where you're coming from the other thing would be
1:11:43
to make sure that this wire so your uh
1:11:50
yeah this is I mean this is the last thing so this is going to be grounded to your chassis
1:11:59
there's a pen it's not a writing
1:12:05
okay so that's your chassis ground right there the other one this positive right here
1:12:14
this one is the one that is coming from going to your you know
1:12:19
your batteries for example
1:12:27
so we want to make sure you make sure there's fuses in two places one is the fuse
1:12:35
that where the power is coming from the battery into the fuse panel
1:12:42
and then the second one is that you have this like blade fuse
1:12:47
for this circuit
1:12:52
so as long as you have those two things you will be you'll be good to go
1:13:15
all right five minutes guys if you have any other questions let me know I'm gonna do one more Spiel here on the DIY
1:13:21
van build cheat sheet so if you guys are just coming into the end of the live stream uh we're talking
1:13:27
about the 64 items that we're adding to are already big list of 250 curated items that are
1:13:35
located in the DIY van build cheat sheet so this cheat sheet is a digital download it's essentially an Excel sheet
1:13:42
that's organized it's the last three years of products that I have I bought off of Amazon
1:13:48
I bought them personally I've used them in Vans customer builds
1:13:53
there's a lot of stuff on here even tools tools is a great section if you guys are looking to start a DIY van
1:13:59
build and don't know where to start as far as buying tools then uh This Is The Place To Go tonight we are actually
1:14:06
adding these 64 items that I've recently bought in the last couple months to the
1:14:12
list and uh so they'll be added on it at the end of next week if you want to get grab
1:14:18
this list completely free sit right to your inbox go to van builderhq.com
1:14:25
click on the link in the description below I'm gonna go ahead and copy this so that is the link to this page
1:14:32
if you want to go direct to it or you can go to vanbuilderhq.com put your name email address it's going to come direct
1:14:38
to your inbox it's completely free all right back to going to his question
1:14:44
uh so glad I chose the ecoflow power kit just figuring out the accessory wiring
1:14:52
uh yeah so uh I want to talk about that
1:14:58
um so go and do it I got four minutes I'm gonna go I'm just gonna cover something really quick let's see how fast I can do
1:15:05
this so the Eco flow you have the box and it's got all that the connectors so I'm
1:15:12
assuming that is where you're going to connect those wires so essentially if this is the Eco flow
1:15:21
box so this is that distribution box uh I don't know I'm like making up pictures
1:15:26
or whatever so there's this distribution box and you got 12 volt lines coming out
1:15:33
for example I know this is not neat this is just
1:15:38
Morpher to show you so if you have these come out
1:15:45
um these you can put the switch
1:15:50
uh where am I
1:15:57
think you put the switch here um because
1:16:04
this the Eco this is where your fuses are located I believe in that ecoflow
1:16:09
box oh wait I'm not sorry he couldn't see that let me pull up the Eco flow really quick
1:16:22
so
1:16:29
yeah I just I just switched it um
1:16:34
here we go here we go here we go wait wait
1:16:41
all right so you have okay
1:16:52
all right so go do you have the uh this the AC DC distribution panel
1:16:58
so this panel you have these blade fuses right here so this blade fuse this panel right here
1:17:06
that you have let me just kind of zoom in okay this
1:17:12
oh come on computer okay so this
1:17:17
panel on your ecofo kit this right here is the same thing that I drew
1:17:26
here so this fuse panel right there
1:17:33
that is for your system
1:17:38
I can't put my mouse is this these blade fuses
1:17:43
so if you tap into this it will be a fuse circuit which that'll be safe
1:17:50
and then all you'll need to do is just run a wire
1:17:56
right here and then put a switch on it
1:18:06
so that that's that's the nice thing about the ecoflow kit is uh
1:18:12
it's you know it's kind of like it's already ready already I wonder if I get a better picture real
1:18:19
quick but uh
1:18:26
next van build we will be talking about the Eco flow because hopefully we will be getting
1:18:33
that system um yeah but this distribution box right
1:18:38
here I'm going to do this is a you're already fused here so if you run
1:18:44
a wire from here with a switch on it yeah you should be good to go
1:18:49
all right guys that is it for the live stream this evening if you have any other questions just put them in the
1:18:55
comments below after this video I look forward to seeing you guys next week you
1:19:00
know bring all your questions love to answer them live on live stream we do one once a week so uh this is for one
1:19:06
for this week but that's a shop update we updated our van Builder DOI van build
1:19:11
cheat sheet so make sure you guys check that out link is in the description and um yeah
1:19:18
do we have any more questions tonight look forward to hopping on a live stream with everyone next week and uh I'll talk
1:19:25
to you again real soon [Music]
1:19:36
thank you
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