Electrical Wiring Kit and All!

[daveb]

Originally Posted by rallypanam

Off topic a bit: The stock wiring runs down the driver's side ceiling/wall joint. and they all run up the B pillar right behind the driver's seat.. And that's easy to access, just pop off the stock ford plastic. I would start there and see if the wiring is screwed up before or after that point.

Yeah Robb, I'm hoping it's between the #12 fuse and the spot where it heads into the body. It just points to how poorly it's ran. I know SMB wouldn't mess with the stock wire system, but once there is a bunch of crap in the way it sure turns an easy job into a job that makes your day.

[arctictraveller]

Originally Posted by daveb

. I'd want access to pull in a new circuit through tubing or conduit if necessary w/o having to remove any of the conversion.

Properly routed, protected and terminated wires will rarely give you any trouble, so planning for failure should hopefully be un-needed. Never the less, failures do happen and in addition you never know what you may want to add in the future. I've had great luck planning for expansion by running extra wires during the initial install. That way, if you do something like putting a screw through one, have some other different type of failure or want to expand your system, you already have additional wires available. The wires them selves almost never fail, (unless they chafe on something, but that won't happen because you plan to properly protect them) It's the splices and connections that cause most problems. NEC (national electrical code) and ABYC (American boat and yacht counsel) standards require all splices to be in a box that is accessable for maintenance, but in a van that may not always be possible. Proper crimping should eliminate almost all failures. Here's a great arcticle on how to do that http://www.passagemaker.com/articles/te ... the-crimp/ .......................A/T

[arctictraveller]

Originally Posted by rallypanam

If it is a fuse, I'd carefully check the wiring harness behind the drivers seat prior to replacing the fuse (with a properly sized fuse, not a bigger one). Ramseys melt down was caused by the factory wiring harness chafing on the sharp edge of a hole it passed through in the body. He had been having problems with lights just prior to the problem. It was pretty obvous where once it started to smoke. Not a good way to wake up............

[JohnandMandi]

We built our van ourselves including the electrical, entirely 12V. You will need to plan out the best you can and pre-wire before building your walls. Our van is entirely modular, everything can be removed. That being said it is impossible to make everything easily accessible. Removing our couch requires the removal of either our rear platform and storage boxes or the kitchenette. Unless we were oompa loompa sized we couldn't unriddle that problem. Doesn't matter though, removing walls always requires removing a fair bit of the built-ins.

For wiring, make the termination points as accessible as possible and use unspliced runs. Consolidate when you can, we have a single entry and exit for all wiring through the van floor except for exterior fixtures. Best advice I could give is segment out anything that could be a problem on their own circuit. If that is not an option then add an accessible in-line fuse in between the device and the circuit, or both an inline fuse and a quick disconnect. Label both sides of each run and wrap it in packing tape just to be sure.

We decided to have switches for all of our lighting and our exterior outlets. That required trunks to the switches then load wires out to each device. A fair amount of planning is required to get this right. Everything on the exterior needs to be able to be disconnected and should be on a dedicated segment. If your porch light is blowing fuses you'd need to be able to disable it or live without exterior lighting. If it's tied to interior lighting life would suck. We installed quick disconnects behind the walls where each exterior light is. A major pain to deal with but a way to get the others functioning until we can get a replacement.

Ours took a lot of time to plan out and a couple of days to execute. Deciding where things will be is the first step. You cannot plan for the unknown but you can be prepared. If you think you need future expansion then pre wire more or build up your circuits to handle additional loads.

We used this forum and a couple others to piece our system together. You can do it too. Good luck.

-John

[1der]

Keep in mind the poorly placed fastening screw that is in close proximity to a wire run. Little bit of sag, little bit of vibration and now the short is created, usually years after the the fastener was installed. I have seen this one many times.

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by mikracer

Right now you're at an advantage being that you're working with an empty cargo van. I would first try to figure out where you are going to mount the house battery(ies), whether it will be on the frame rails or inside. Then decide where your fuse box, invertor, and convertor will go. Once you have an idea of where you want to place all those things, its really just a matter of running some 18 gauge wire from the fuse panel to the desired areas. Even if you pre-run everything, you will most likely have to take apart the interior panels to cut holes and such to install the plugs and outlets.

This is a great way to start, also think about where you want/need a few fuse panels and run 12-14AWG for runs to fuse panels, and longer runs. You can then figure out what you need to power off of the fuse panels later as properly fused power will be right where you need it.

I ended up with a Blue Sea 6 circuit fuse panel on each side of the van in the rear to feed various things on either side, a small fuse block near the house batts, and another small one in the passenger footwell to have house power available under the dash.

If you are also planning on using an inverter, then figure out how you will run big battery cables from the house batteries to the inverter.

....and assuming that you will also use a battery separator, figure out where/how you will run those battery cables as well.

The above describes about 90% of my van wiring........

Bee, if you list out everything that you think you'll want/need here, I imagine someone will generate a rough wiring diagram.....it's pretty simple stuff.

[daveb]

Originally Posted by arctictraveller

Properly routed, protected and terminated wires will rarely give you any trouble, so planning for failure should hopefully be un-needed. Never the less, failures do happen and in addition you never know what you may want to add in the future. I've had great luck planning for expansion by running extra wires during the initial install. That way, if you do something like putting a screw through one, have some other different type of failure or want to expand your system, you already have additional wires available. The wires them selves almost never fail, (unless they chafe on something, but that won't happen because you plan to properly protect them) It's the splices and connections that cause most problems. NEC (national electrical code) and ABYC (American boat and yacht counsel) standards require all splices to be in a box that is accessable for maintenance, but in a van that may not always be possible. Proper crimping should eliminate almost all failures. Here's a great arcticle on how to do that http://www.passagemaker.com/articles/te ... the-crimp/ .......................A/T

Unfortunately that's not how SMB does it. It would take too much added production time. I still haven't found or looked for the issue I'm having but it seems not to be related to SMB unless the Ford harness running through the body hit a something sharp from the conversion. Installing flex tubing isn't that difficult but even that could be compromised with a long screw.