Under bonnet auxiliary battery

[sabconsulting]

Steve, how have you connected the dc to dc charger in the camper to the truck? Have you done it through the 12S socket? Or have you fitted some other plug and socket elsewhere?

Yes, just the 12S socket. I ran thicker wire from the truck battery to the 12S socket. An Anderson connector with a shorter cable run would be better (rather than all the way to the back of the truck then all the way forward to the front of the camper.

I removed the battery relay on the truck 1) to remove a potential voltage drop and 2) to allow the DC to DC charger to charge the truck battery from solar when the camper battery is full. This is a feature of the CTEK charger.

Steve.

[saDgit]

Steve, how have you connected the dc to dc charger in the camper to the truck? Have you done it through the 12S socket? Or have you fitted some other plug and socket elsewhere?

Yes, just the 12S socket. I ran thicker wire from the truck battery to the 12S socket. An Anderson connector with a shorter cable run would be better (rather than all the way to the back of the truck then all the way forward to the front of the camper.

I removed the battery relay on the truck 1) to remove a potential voltage drop and 2) to allow the DC to DC charger to charge the truck battery from solar when the camper battery is full. This is a feature of the CTEK charger.

Steve.

Very useful. Ta.

[Alexd]

meaniing to ask what sort of gauge wire would be needed to 'just' run a fridge out of interest, i mean if someone wanted to power a fridge independently of sockets?

[Big Jim]

It gets very complicated , doesn't it ?
To make things more simple I could install a second battery pretty close to my camper battery and hook them both up to a solar panel . Perhaps I may not get all the benefits but cable runs are small , nothing to plug in and unplug and all the batteries are always on the camper . I could fit a plastic battery box under the bonnet and fill it with the jack and some tools .
Does that make any sense ?
Jim

[Gary W]

It gets very complicated , doesn't it ?
To make things more simple I could install a second battery pretty close to my camper battery and hook them both up to a solar panel . Perhaps I may not get all the benefits but cable runs are small , nothing to plug in and unplug and all the batteries are always on the camper . I could fit a plastic battery box under the bonnet and fill it with the jack and some tools .
Does that make any sense ?
Jim

Just because you have some space there doesn't mean you should fill it Jim If you need another battery it makes a lot of sense to fit it there, although with a single good quality deep cycle battery of around 120 a/h and a Battery to Battery charger (so your battery gets a full charge) you should get 3 or 4 days autonomy for normal camping (with a compressor fridge) which is enough for most anyway. If you need more it usually makes more sense to fit a solar panel before additional batteries.

Best wishes

Gary