Vanimal: 4x4 Sprinter build

[trae]

Trae,

Thx!

Yeah the single yellow Baja Designs light is way brighter than that light bar. In reality a single one is great. It’s about 5000 lumens if I remember, I got the XL80. I want to replace the light bar with two white BD lights at some point. Expensive but excellent. My interior lights are BD rock lights BTW, different than most folks.

BJ stuff is very expensive.. I'm just thinking, why get the offroad lights, that I'd use 1% of the time, vs upgrading stock headlights.. sorry just thinking out loud.

We use slack to chat about the trip with friends and family. I try not to pay attention to work. we have a slack bot that probes the Victron API as well. I’ll post more about that as I get more into the install.

That's hilarious. Looking forward to more reports.

 

[Kgorman]

I wish I did this tire size 255/85R16 right off the bat. Really nice. The Toyo MTs so far are awesome (dry, gravel). This is, however, the largest diameter I would go without some sort of power mod (diff or tune).

 

[Kgorman]

 

[Kgorman]

 

[Kgorman]

 

[Kgorman]

My brother came out from CA to help with my system. The new electrical configuration is done, and we did a quick overnight trip to shake it down. Bacon, eggs, etc stayed ice cold all night, fridge was about 38/40 degrees in 95 degree heat. Success!

The goal was to enable vanimal to have a fridge, but do it in such a way that I have full visibility into the health of the electrical system via the iPad as well as sharing various data points for the friends and family to follow along with our adventures. My brother started doing this, and well, I had to level up.

The Victron stuff is nice, but the Venus GX (and thus the CCGX) display is terrible. I’m going to have to fix that. AMSolar folks are great to work with. RBComponents stuff is high quality.

The configuration we added is:
- 100w SP100 solar panel from AMSolar on RBComponents bars, this combination fits sideways on a sprinter.
- Victron 100/50 solar charger, overkill for this, but I got it used.
- Victron 100a battery protect
- Victron VenusGX
- Lifeline GPL-31XT
- Wiring, cables, etc from AMSolar
- Verizon MHS7730
- GlobalSat BU-353-S4 USB

The fridge charges via solar and alternator when driving in the day, alternator when driving at night, and solar when stopped in the day. We saw 6.5A coming from solar at one point. As most of you know the solar acts like a giant maintainer, not only keeping the battery full, but keeping it well maintained.

The battery protect disconnects my loads if we drop below 12v as a safety feature. I plan to wire the remote for it to a disconnect switch for when vanimal is in storage mode.

The ARB fridge is really nice, it’s been covered a ton so I will skip a review. It’s about 1A average load.

The Venus GX gets data from all the devices via the VE.net bus, and transmits the data to the vrm portal. Essential storing my power usage in the cloud. For internet access it uses the mifi. I also use the mifi so all devices (kids, my iPad, etc) all share the same data plan and coverage. The mifi lives in the rig so it’s always internet connected (as long as we have cell coverage). If we don’t the venusGX caches the data on an SD card and bulk uploads when it does.

The net effect is I’m always gps tracked - and have a history of my power usage. Yeah, I’m a nerd.

This lifeline battery is clearly amazing and fits perfectly. We have set our BMV monitor such that it alarms at 12.00v and the disconnect is set at 12.00v so we might move the alarm up a bit. The vrm portal will email me if we drop below that.

We have a couple of little items to finish up based on our test like adding a couple high power usb chargers on the house battery, tidying up some cables, and sealing the roof gland further with dicor. We need to hardware the power for the mifi so it’s on the house battery.

This should be a game changer in our upcoming CO trip. Can’t wait

 

[Kgorman]

Oh forgot to mention, lastly I modified the husky tool chest to have a slide out for the fridge. We wanted the low power usage and top loading features of the ARB - hence it vs a more traditional fridge. We used the slimmest drawer in the bottom and the fridge fits perfectly. I need to drill out the rivets and move around drawers to maximize our storage space. I’ll be honest, this isn’t as nice as like a full blown RBComponents unit or some of the custom stuff you see out there, but it’s very inexpensive, and works great. The feet on the fridge are attached via screws, so I plan to remove those and drill through the drawer to secure it to the drawer. When I find a wooden countertop I like I will add that.

 

[Kgorman]

 

[Kgorman]

Slack bot is live... the Victron API is pretty cool. https://vrmapi.victronenergy.com/v2/docs

.kg
Vanimal: battery voltage is 13.02v, load is 0 watts, solar yield is 2.606 watts, state of charge is 97.7 % (Discharging), last ping 58 seconds ago, location lat:xxxx lon:xxxx (Victron) (map), kg is still alive

The reason for using this is I am generally in slack all day for various other reasons, but mostly that I am in tech. I’ve grown to view it as my dashboard for all things. Viewing the SOC and other info is just easier this way, albeit nerdy. Thx to EB and dang for collaboration.

 

[Kgorman]

Got the Vancompass/Fox suspension installed. Anxious to give it a test offroad.

For my setup I went with both shocks in front and rear, it I wanted the adjustable rears. I have two different use cases, one where I tow offroad often (see previous post pic) and are unloaded. I got the sumo springs for both front and rear as well.

Install was pretty easy, took about 4 hours. The instructions are pretty good from Vancompass, no big issues. I set the rear adjusters 1/2 and will tune from there.

We leave for a huge overland trip in two weeks, it’s getting to be crunch time, there is so much to do.

The solar/battery/fridge setup works great. Love it.

 

[brianjwilson]

Starting to find it odd that two people got van compass front shocks about the same time as I did and you both got shock boots. Hmm...

 

[Kgorman]

@brianjwilson maybe just buzz them? Maybe it was a simple oversight? They seem pretty cool.

 

[Kgorman]

Aluminess ladder. I really like how it mounts to the roof track. Drilling holes and such was no biggie but they could have pre drilled everything I suspect. Requires two holes in the seam at the bottom - I sealed with Steel-It.

 

[Kgorman]

Seat swivel that RBComponents sells. Overall nice quality but the clearances to swivel are really tight, you have to adjust your seat to swivel. It adds some height to the seat and if you lower your seat back down it catches and won’t swivel.

If you really really want to swivel this is a nice unit, but I am not totally sure swivelling is worth it. I will report back if we end up loving it.

 

[brianjwilson]

That does look high! My factory swivel seats have lower bases to account for that, though I don’t remember how much difference there is. Might be worth looking for a set.