US $54.75
It's been a pretty busy week and was able to get a lot of work done on the trailer. Since I really don't have a good place to do major work on the trailer I took it in to a local shop to get a few things done.
They repacked the wheel bearings and installed the electric awning upgrade. It will be nice to not have to worry about the wheel bearings and it's also good to know the brakes are in good shape. Carefree of Colorado has an upgrade kit to change a manual awning to electric. Saves about $800 over installing a completely new unit. I had to give it a try once I got it home, it sure is sweet just to press a button to extend the awning instead having to do it manually.... that 19' awning can be a real bear for one person to handle.
Couldn't ask for a better late October day as it got into the lower 70's so I tackled the wiring. Redid most for the main battery wiring by installing a 2 position main cutoff switch. This will let me just connect the inverter to the batteries, just the main trailer 12 volt system or both.
I also installed an auxiliary 12 volt distribution center to power accessories and hooked the electric awning to it. This will let me easily install other 12 volt accessories later on if I need to. Was also able to get the wiring from the solar charger to the batteries completed. All that is left to do is hook up the wiring of the solar panels to the charger. Figure that will take a couple hours and the wiring will be done.
Wiring may seem like to would be fairly simple but it can be a real pain. First you are working with large wire because some of these circuits can carry close to 200 amps! 4/0 size (about 1/2" dia.) wiring to connect the batteries together. Also using 1/0 cable from the solar charger to the batteries and between the batteries and the inverter. #4 cable is used from the solar panels to the charger.
On top of that each of these circuits require a cutoff switch and fuse. 40 amp fuse and switch on the input and output of the solar charger, a 50 amp fuse on the auxiliary 12 volt distribution center and a 250 amp fuse in the inverter circuit.
Hopefully I can get the solar panels hooked up tomorrow and I'll be done with everything that has to be done. I do want to put the landing gear on a switched circuit so someone can't just come by and mess with the landing gear but it's isn't something that is critical.
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