G'day one and all! Hilly here from SA

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Hillysfolly

Member
Joined
May 28, 2015
Messages
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Location
Yorke Peninsula SA.
Howdy guys and girls.
Just a quick intro before I start delving into all the scum ulster (??? that's iphone spell check for 'accumulated'!! Don't you love your spell check. Haha)......into all the accumulated knowledge here to be had for free!!
I just bought my first nav..silver 1997 qd32 dual cab with 213ks. Pretty stock except after market rims and a lift.
It's parked alongside my rd28t patrol and both are getting prepared to tow a camper van and tinny for an extended (intended) 12 month trip around oz.
I have 6 kids of ages 19 down to 4 months and yes.....you all guessed it...... We don't have a TV. Not one that's hooked up to an antenna anyway.
My 17 yo son will be towing the tinny behind the nav and I'll drive the patrol with campervan (still looking for the right one). We'll have one other diesel fourby....an ancient delica 2.5td that my 19yo daughter will drive with a 6x4 trailer to carry some supplies.
We've been talking about this trip for years and it's never happened. So as I'm just the wrong side of my last 50thou service I figured it was now or never.
However I look at it, it's bloody obvious I've got a fair bit to organise but I'm hoping for a once in a lifetime experience for all of us as a family before I start tossing em out of the nest!
I've got a couple of pics of my cars on my phone and if I can work how to post them I'll give you all a look see.
Any suggestions or comments on anything relating to this trip and/or setting up the cars will be welcome and appreciated.
Some of the items I have or am getting are -
Rooftop tents x3
Cb's all round
Good recovery kit
At least one winch
Kayaks x 2
Motorbikes (1x250, 1x125)
Folding pushy (just to pedal into shops etc)
Good fridge
Couple of camp ovens
.....and so on.
Well that's enough of me for now. Looking forward to browsing the forum for as much info as possible.
Take care all.
Cheers. Hilly.
 
Welcome champ, photobucket is great to upload pictures from phones :)

Keen to see the rig :)
 
Welcome to the forum!

Roof-mounted solar panels where possible would be one thing to add to the mix. I'd also have one tank - somewhere - with water that you use exclusively for drinking. We have one on our caravan, and I only use a canvas hose to fill it.

Electric fridges are great but they consume a fair bit of electricity, so a good dual battery system should be in the vehicle with the fridge. A dual zone fridge (so that you can have frozen stuff, or freeze bottles of water to use as cold sources in an esky). If you have a 3-way fridge, it should be run on electric power while mobile and on gas when you stop. On 12V they generally don't run their thermostats but on 240V they do, and the 12V amperage is similar to the amps you'll draw powering an inverter to run the fridge on 240V (so that you're using a thermostat). Always use 8G or better cable for lengths over 3m, and ALWAYS fuse the cables close to the battery.

Above all - enjoy!
 
Thanks guys

Thanks guys. Good advice re fridges tony. I'll have a re read of your post in a minute.
I've just set up a photobucket acc thingy (technical term) and I have managed to upload a pic of both patrol and nav to p bucket but in this reply it didn't seem to allow me the option of dropping them in from p bucket so I browsed from the images on my phone. But it only let me upload one image. ????
There was another option said upload from URL. maybe that was what I should have done??
Anyway I hope the image of the nav is somehow attached. Pls let me know if there's an easier way to go!!
Thanks fellas.
 

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Nice rig mate

How to upload to here with p bucket
Click the image you want to upload mate then click the chain like icon above it. As seen below


Then use this image URL code to put up the pic onto your post here hit enter and repeat
 
Thanks man. I'll give it a go. Pretty lame with hi tech stuff. That's why I'm kinda comfortable with the qd32 and it's low tech low power systems!!
If this works it'll be a pic of the navs stablemate. The nav is in the background.

Let me know if I've done something wrong. And here's a shot of the nav that came out as a thumbnail before....

Ok. Maybe I'll get the hang of this after all. Haha.
 
Welcome to the forum!

Roof-mounted solar panels where possible would be one thing to add to the mix. I'd also have one tank - somewhere - with water that you use exclusively for drinking. We have one on our caravan, and I only use a canvas hose to fill it.

Electric fridges are great but they consume a fair bit of electricity, so a good dual battery system should be in the vehicle with the fridge. A dual zone fridge (so that you can have frozen stuff, or freeze bottles of water to use as cold sources in an esky). If you have a 3-way fridge, it should be run on electric power while mobile and on gas when you stop. On 12V they generally don't run their thermostats but on 240V they do, and the 12V amperage is similar to the amps you'll draw powering an inverter to run the fridge on 240V (so that you're using a thermostat). Always use 8G or better cable for lengths over 3m, and ALWAYS fuse the cables close to the battery.

Above all - enjoy!
Old Tony are you saying that if we have a 240volt inverter we are better off running our fridges on 240 rather than 12v?
 
I did this Joe in the last van most 3 way's on 12volt have no thermostat and don't know when to stop. The result was frozen lettuce ect on a longer drive, running on 240 gives you much more control via the thermostat, also the 240 volt element is a tad more powerful than the 12 volt element. I also powered a 20 amp charger in the van to maintain the 2 120a/h agm's. The Engel in the tub was on 12 volt of course.
 
The fridge info is new to me but as an old ex sparky it makes sense.
I do have dual bats on patrol. But I have a question.....the isolator is just one of those old fashioned solenoids. What are the advantages of the new electronic isolators. I'm on a tight (lycra tight!) budget as I'm basically setting up three vehicles. If I can use what I have I'll try and make do.
I still need to fit a dual battery tray in the nav and from what I can see I'll need to move the fuel filter. I need to get a snorkel for it also so. May get rid of the factory air box (filter is ready to renew anyway) and put in an 80 series one and then snorkel it up.
So another q. Can I get a different snorkel other than the long ones that run almost to the nose.it looks like the side indicator needs to move. I reckon they just look ugly. Could one designed for the zd30 work? I am assuming that the factory cut out on the inner guard behind the pre filter is the same on all variants? So do the snorkels that enter the guards 1/2 way down somehow have a connector pipe hidden behind the inner guard that brings it out the factory cut out?
I will get some solar panels and water storage is at the top of my list.
There's a eBay seller I've been watching for some time and spoke to him recently who has rooftop tents complete with annexe and also includes side pull out awning including mozzy screen room. He has them listed for just under $1200. He said he'd do three for a grand a piece. He claims they're made in south Africa and are basically identical to the ARB ones with only minor differences. Anyone have an opinion on these as they seem pretty affordable but I don't want cheap stuff that's gonna fail.
Well I guess that's enough q's for now. Let me know if I should be asking these somewhere else??
And Nav012 I tried dropping in some pics from photo bucket and the preview looked to have worked but when I posted it I got a message about it having to be reviewed by moderators and I haven't seen it on site yet. Is this normal and how long does it take?
Thanks guys.
 
Old Tony are you saying that if we have a 240volt inverter we are better off running our fridges on 240 rather than 12v?

Absolutely, and Happy John has explained it quite well.

The 12V heater doesn't produce as much heat as the 240V one, yet they both use about the same watts. I think my new van's fridge is 330W on 12V and 380W on 240V.

Because it doesn't produce as much heat, it's basically employed as a "maintenance mode" - designed to operate while you're driving (and you're obviously not in the back and opening the fridge).

The first drawback for us is that if we stop to have lunch somewhere, we're going to open that fridge (especially in summer, where the hell else do you store the beer? It's not bloody England!) and in the 12V "maintenance mode" the fridge isn't really going to return to its previous level of coldness by the time of our next stop.

The second drawback is if we really do a long haul (we've done Marla -> Balranald in one stretch) as John points out the food would freeze because it doesn't know when to stop.

If you're going to pull that many amps, cater for a few more and let the fridge work like you'd expect, is my motto. I built a little circuit that auto-switches from mains power 240V to the inverter-supplied 240V and back again without interference. I can run the fridge on 12V as well - it's all still connected (to the same wiring) but I prefer functionality.

The only thing I suggest is that you test the connection between the neutral outlet of the inverter and the battery negative input. There should be NO connection. If there's a connection, your inverter is NOT electrically isolated and may present a risk of shock when touching the car/van.
 
The fridge info is new to me but as an old ex sparky it makes sense.
I do have dual bats on patrol. But I have a question.....the isolator is just one of those old fashioned solenoids. What are the advantages of the new electronic isolators. I'm on a tight (lycra tight!) budget as I'm basically setting up three vehicles. If I can use what I have I'll try and make do.

The expensive isolators are nice and they make sure your battery gets fully recharged but as an ex sparky you'll understand the following really well.

Your starter motor needs about 500A to crank the car over, and in the 5 seconds that it takes to do that you'll draw a total of 5*500/3600 = 694mAh, which is considerably less than the energy in a standard AA battery. That's a piece of cake for your alternator to provide, and you'll often find that seconds after you've started your engine, the voltage is already at >14.1V and the isolators would all be active anyway (they cut in at 13.2V).

So, do you NEED a fancy isolator? No. A decent relay operating off a ignition-on supply will do the job nicely.

And Nav012 I tried dropping in some pics from photo bucket and the preview looked to have worked but when I posted it I got a message about it having to be reviewed by moderators and I haven't seen it on site yet. Is this normal and how long does it take?
Thanks guys.

The forum only has two administrators now and I haven't seen them in absolutely ages. They will approve your posts as soon as they can.

Oh wait, a mirror - there's one! Catch him!
 
Thanks Old.Tony. Good to know I can use the solenoid. I see my post with the pics is now up......looks like one of the administrators was just snoozing on the job! At least I know I did it right for next time.
And your maths had me for a bit. P=IV and all that. I did my time with ETSA but dropped out shortly after finishing my apprenticeship and chose a career in professional photography so I'm a bit rusty on all the old electrical stuff these days. And 12v always had me scratching my head cause I could never figure where to hook that third wire haha.
 
The administrators aren't actually employed, they're just guys like you and me that hang around the forum a lot.

Hint: they're guys that are a LOT like me.

Stronger hint: look at the title under my name in this post.

As for the third wire ... I thought that was for better reception?
 
Yeah I did get that Tony. Was just having a gentle dig at ya! Outa interest, what's your background if you don't mind me asking? You seem to have a pretty good handle on electrical stuff. Or is that just from a lot of playing around with 12volt systems? Or is there an engineering background or something there?
 
There's a bit of engineering (primary focus actually on high energy physics) and a lot of tinkering.

The "circuit" is really rather simple and is based around this relay from Jaycar. Here's the circuit - it's a little mashed up around the relay but I didn't want to have a common neutral.

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The "plug into mains" is really just the end of an extension lead. All of the joins are done under the double power point which I mounted on a raised block. Even the relay fits in there, so all you really see is a board with a power point, inverter and a couple of cables.
 

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Thanks Old.Tony. I might try and do something similar. Looks like a simple solution. So the inverter is powered up all the time supplying 240v to the fridge but as soon as you plug the socket into the mains the relay changes over and isolates the inverter and supplies the fridge with mains power?
 
It works the other way around but could easily work your way by switching the feeds from mains/inverter to the opposite side of the centre relay poles. The NC connection means "Normally Closed" which is like the "default connection", so with everything hooked up but the car switched off, the circuit supplies power from mains through the relay to the double power point. Turning the car on activates the relay (and turns on the inverter) and so power is supplied to the power point from the inverter instead.
 

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