Outfitting my Grenadier Trialmaster
- Thread starter jscherb
- Start date
jscherb
Expedition Leader
When we're on a long trip or expedition my wife likes to bring her own food, she often cooks it at home and stores it in the fridge in the Grenadier then heats it up with an electric pot. The pot has two settings, one of which is within the range of the Grenadier's factory inverter and but the pot's high setting (600 watts) is above the capacity of the factory inverter. She says the lower setting works fast enough for her but I'm thinking about providing for a higher power inverter for her. I've got a 750-watt modified sine wave inverter I've used in the Jeeps for a few years and it works very well for her cooking and electric blanket purposes (having grown up in a hot place she's often cold). In the Jeeps I installed a connection to the auxiliary battery with an Anderson connector so the inverter could be used as needed in either Jeep.
I'm thinking of installing a bulkhead-type Anderson connector in the side panel in the Grenadier's cargo area and wiring it to the Grenadier's main battery through a circuit breaker and maybe a 15a fuse on the output. Something like this:
BTW the receptacle for the factory inverter can be seen on the floor, I plugged in a short extension cord with a flat plug so it's accessible with the Jack Compartment Bag in place and the flat plug takes up no space in the bag.
I would mount the inverter on the side of the kitchen housing.
The kitchen lives in the garage and gets installed in the Grenadier as needed (it installs very quickly on the L-tracks in the floor) so it's out of the vehicle now but the inverter would fit nicely on the side of the kitchen housing, just behind the kitchen's power panel.
I'm thinking of installing a bulkhead-type Anderson connector in the side panel in the Grenadier's cargo area and wiring it to the Grenadier's main battery through a circuit breaker and maybe a 15a fuse on the output. Something like this:
BTW the receptacle for the factory inverter can be seen on the floor, I plugged in a short extension cord with a flat plug so it's accessible with the Jack Compartment Bag in place and the flat plug takes up no space in the bag.
I would mount the inverter on the side of the kitchen housing.
The kitchen lives in the garage and gets installed in the Grenadier as needed (it installs very quickly on the L-tracks in the floor) so it's out of the vehicle now but the inverter would fit nicely on the side of the kitchen housing, just behind the kitchen's power panel.
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Would you mind sharing some information about the cooking pot please.
jscherb
Expedition Leader
Sure. She found it on Amazon, it's got two settings - 250w and 600w. It's got a non-stick inside and a glass lid. The label on the bottom says 1.5L capacity. A search on Amazon for "Dezin electric pot" should find it. That's all I know about it.
jscherb
Expedition Leader
It's working as far as I need it to for now - I'm able to manually read the factory sensors and I'm able to program an Autel sensor with the ID of a factory sensor. That enables me to have a second spare that if I need to I can program it with the ID of the damaged tire it's replacing.
I was unable to use the OBD interface to talk to the Grenadier, which is what you're referring to. I have a question into Autel support about that but even if the answer is no, the WF model does do what I need. When/if I hear back from Autel, I will post their reply here.
I don't need it to do any more than I've described above. Since the dealer rotates the tires each service and they deal with the Grenadier's ECU during the rotation, I don't need to worry about that, I only care about being able to program a second spare and have the Grenadier recognize it.
jscherb
Expedition Leader
In case anyone cases, Autel support says:
But they still don't understand the Grenadier because there's no way to do a "relearn on the vehicle."
It's ok with my because manually copying IDs and programming new sensors with those IDs is what I bought the device for and I'm happy with how easily it does that.
But they still don't understand the Grenadier because there's no way to do a "relearn on the vehicle."
It's ok with my because manually copying IDs and programming new sensors with those IDs is what I bought the device for and I'm happy with how easily it does that.
jscherb
Expedition Leader
Auxbeam's new KS-80 8-circuit "Knob Switch Panel"
Auxbeam's new "Knob Switch Panel" is an 8-circuit unit with some groundbreaking features, including the ability to dim lights controlled by it, various "bling" options such as chase lights and strobe lighting. There are also external trigger inputs and can turn on a circuit when some other circuit turns on, for example you can connect a trigger to a the brake light circuit in the vehicle and when the brake lights are activated the system will activate one of its circuits - useful if you want to have extra strobed brake lights that nobody can miss. A few weeks ago they sent me one to review; I posted a full review over in the Jeep section of the forum: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/...circuit-knob-switch-panel.250524/post-3244648
A bench-test video demo:
Here I'll just post a few thoughts about installing the system in a Grenadier, but there's a lot more detail in the full review linked above.
The best place I've found to mount the control box in a Grenadier is under the back seat just over the battery. The plastic battery cover is a little flimsy for this purpose so reinforcing it with a metal bar across the screw locations might be a good idea, but the good news is that the supplied battery cables are more than long enough for this location, and the wire to connect the switch panel is also long enough to reach from the control box to the dash.
For more detail please visit the full review in the Jeep section: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/...circuit-knob-switch-panel.250524/post-3244648
Auxbeam's new "Knob Switch Panel" is an 8-circuit unit with some groundbreaking features, including the ability to dim lights controlled by it, various "bling" options such as chase lights and strobe lighting. There are also external trigger inputs and can turn on a circuit when some other circuit turns on, for example you can connect a trigger to a the brake light circuit in the vehicle and when the brake lights are activated the system will activate one of its circuits - useful if you want to have extra strobed brake lights that nobody can miss. A few weeks ago they sent me one to review; I posted a full review over in the Jeep section of the forum: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/...circuit-knob-switch-panel.250524/post-3244648
A bench-test video demo:
Here I'll just post a few thoughts about installing the system in a Grenadier, but there's a lot more detail in the full review linked above.
The best place I've found to mount the control box in a Grenadier is under the back seat just over the battery. The plastic battery cover is a little flimsy for this purpose so reinforcing it with a metal bar across the screw locations might be a good idea, but the good news is that the supplied battery cables are more than long enough for this location, and the wire to connect the switch panel is also long enough to reach from the control box to the dash.
For more detail please visit the full review in the Jeep section: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/...circuit-knob-switch-panel.250524/post-3244648
jscherb
Expedition Leader
Another Auxbeam product... Auxbeam has a very comprehensive range of LED lighting options. A while back they sent me their 9 Inch 15,000 Lumen Spot Beam LED Driving Lights which I installed on one of my Jeeps and wrote a review https://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/barn-door-for-jk-factory-hardtops.127687/post-2940341). I kept them on the Jeep for a while but the way I use that Jeep almost never required that much lighting so I removed them and kept them for some future use. Yesterday I posed them on the Grenadier to see how they might fit/look there.
Posed on the bumper:
Might be better up on the rack. In this next photo they're sitting on the roof because that was an easy way to pose them there for the photo, but they would mount pretty easily on the front of the rack, I could replace the smaller lights that are already mounted (which are also Auxbeam products). There's enough room up there that they wouldn't stick up above the rack so no loss of overhead clearance, they would clear the roof, and there still would be enough space between them for my solar panel which mounts under the rack and pulls out for full access to the sun.
Mostly I posed them on the Grenadier out of curiosity, I'm not sure I need the extra lighting on that vehicle right now either.
Posed on the bumper:
Might be better up on the rack. In this next photo they're sitting on the roof because that was an easy way to pose them there for the photo, but they would mount pretty easily on the front of the rack, I could replace the smaller lights that are already mounted (which are also Auxbeam products). There's enough room up there that they wouldn't stick up above the rack so no loss of overhead clearance, they would clear the roof, and there still would be enough space between them for my solar panel which mounts under the rack and pulls out for full access to the sun.
Mostly I posed them on the Grenadier out of curiosity, I'm not sure I need the extra lighting on that vehicle right now either.
jscherb
Expedition Leader
Experimenting with ideas for mounting things on the center dash... I made these prototype brackets out of aluminum angle this morning. I haven't trimmed the sides or tops yet, my first goal was to get the fit on the dash correct. The tops and sides can be trimmed for whatever I decide to mount here.
Not sure where I'll go with theses brackets - in the top two photos a piece of L-track is posed in place between the brackets, that's one way these could be used.
One of my first projects after getting the Grenadier was adding L-track on the dash in place of the shallow and almost useless rubber tray in front of the driver; I've been using it for the past year for my GPS.
At this point it's just an experiment to see what the possibilities are.
Not sure where I'll go with theses brackets - in the top two photos a piece of L-track is posed in place between the brackets, that's one way these could be used.
One of my first projects after getting the Grenadier was adding L-track on the dash in place of the shallow and almost useless rubber tray in front of the driver; I've been using it for the past year for my GPS.
At this point it's just an experiment to see what the possibilities are.
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