Keen not to flatten the primary battery when camping – lighting, phone charging for now, but water pumps etc to come – it seemed wise to fit an auxiliary battery.
Luckily the Patrols had a factory option of a secondary battery. Not that mine had one, but it did have the perfect battery-size space under the bonnet for one.
I bodged up a mounting for the battery from an ABS battery tray, some brackets, threaded bar and a cheap battery-clamp.
And view from the inner wheel arch where this bolts down
A long time ago on one of my forages at the scrapyard, I picked up a small fuse/relay box from some kind of small car. Maybe a Fiat, but I can’t recall.
I wanted to use for fuses and relay so set about making more Heath Robinson bracketry from bits I had lying around. Also notice the split charge relay in the photo below as well.
it sits nice and firm.
Contained in the box so far is a 40amp fuse for all power into that box, a big relay and 30amp fuse for the lightbar, 2 smaller relays with 10amp fuses which are for the rear lights and live feed into the roof tent, and finally a 10amp fuse for a permanent live into the cabin. Plenty of scope for adding more items though.
The wiring up to the roof meets at the back of the engine bay.
The 10 wires are: left and right directional indicators, brake, tail, rear spots, left and right awning lights, lightbar, power feed for accessories ‘upstairs’ and an earth.
I drilled a hole through the scuttle panel and some convoluted tubing then takes the wires up and out the engine bay.
Up the side of the windscreen.
And to the waterproof connectors where they join the roof tent
The split charge system also has a cool little panel that gives the health of each battery and indicates when each is charging. Just need to mount this somewhere more permanent in the cab now though.
Below is the switch that controls power to the roof tent (phone chargers & strip light for now).
All in all, the wiring took a fair bit of time to do, and its’ not the neatest job. But it works.
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