Up next in 10
Todays livestream will go over my top 15 power system parts you can buy on amazon to start you power system install.
Plus, i'll go over a few of my favorite tools for the job.
Visit the blog at https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more.
Interested in Nick building your van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com
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[Music] foreign [Music]
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foreign hey guys welcome to the live stream today we're going to go over 15 Amazon
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tools that you can buy to install your power system so we're going to go over here and hop
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over to Amazon here in just a second but what I wanted to do was take you
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through a couple of the examples of the tools that I use when I'm installing Power Systems and vans
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stuff that I mean pretty much everything you can buy on Amazon and things that really make it uh really easy I would
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say if you have the budget I would get all these because they have helped me
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um very very much so yeah let's jump on into it if you have any questions put them in the chat
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below and we will um I'll answer them if you have any questions on these tools
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as we go through I'm trying to rush through it so I'm going to talk about a little bit of the details on each of
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these tools so for example we've got these pliers right here so
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what I'll do is this is literally what I have in my shopping cart right now I put 15 in here
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and then what I'm going to do later in the video is I'm going to do some bonus tools so that's stuff that if you're
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already ready to go with these it's the next step in stuff you would want to go ahead and purchase
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because if you're installing a power system in your van I mean this is the Necessities I mean this is stuff that
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you're going to buy anyway so might as well get a recommendation from me right
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all right so the first thing we'll go over and it's really no particular order but we'll kind of put an order together
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here let's start with uh like hand tools so we'll go through a couple
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hand tools as you can see this is obviously all available on Amazon to purchase so we'll
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have some hand tools we'll have some electrical items such as shrink wrap
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um or the shrinkable wire wrap heat shrink tubing it's also called
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we'll talk about some power uh some cable
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marine grade cable is really what we want to look at as well as welding wire
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which is down here at the bottom so we got some pure copper we'll talk
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about some ends sorry for battery terminal connections and then we'll kind
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of finish up with uh some extras such as cripping tools
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um battery lugs and then at the very bottom
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I've got some bonuses down here so uh stuff in this category we'll go into
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a little bit more detail about why this would really help you out all right so at the top of the list
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is the Klein Tools 11061 wire stripper
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this is one of my most favorite tools to do to use in the van
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and I've got an example of it right here so let me just pull this up
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there you go make sure you guys can see it on the screen get all the details I'm sure all you guys are on Amazon
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um so you know how to just type this in and look it up
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later on what we'll do is we'll put links to all these tools in the chat
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and let's see here so we'll go back to this don't freak out
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I'm gonna go to my face here for a second because I want to show you this tool so this is what the tool looks like
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and to use this tool because it could have had some wire
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ready there we go we got plenty of wire in the
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shop
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so we have our tool and we got some wire so most of the time you guys will have
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those wire strippers that have the uh the fingers in them and oh heck I'll just
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grab that too and you got the fingers and it's you know everybody probably has a pair
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of these they're just a small one with like the holes in them right here
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these right here so everybody usually has a pair of these they're either very cheap they're like from Harbor Freight or they might be a
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nicer pair so these are okay but the problem with these is if you
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guys have used them before when you go to strip the wire and you go to pull it now I'm gonna do
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this the wrong way just to prove a point but you can you can cut the wires in here all right
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and the reason it's very dangerous in any electrical situation is because
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um you're increasing uh the resistance on these uh
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fine wires so the gauge of a wire is dependent on
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not necessarily how many strands but but how many uh how thick
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the the thickness in number of copper strands within the cable so if you start if you improperly strip
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this and you start pulling these uh pieces off and you end up with less wire
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then this wire is going to heat up and it's not going to be rated for whatever capacity that you have
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so when you hear these stories about people's Vans catching on fire what's happening is
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this this wire it doesn't have a connection is not good
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so there's going to be a lot of resistance built up right here at this connection point and essentially this
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wire is almost going to turn into like a toaster oven in your van and that's that's really how it happens the resistance that there's not enough
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connection here to allow the electricity to flow freely
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and this will start to heat up and get really hot in a perfect world your fuse is going to
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melt before that but guess what if you size your fuse to the wire properly but
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when you went to strip the wire you removed half the wires
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that wire is not rated the same even though the rest of the wire is uh is fine
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so something you can do a tool that can give you a bit more peace of mind and speed on building the
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van is this tool right here again Klein Tools this is the 11
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11061-11061 okay so check it out it's got teeth
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right here in the bottom and you can just cut your wire
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this is a bad example right now because I have highly used this and I've used it
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for a wire that is not supposed to be cut by this so I've used it for much thicker wire so the teeth are a little a
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little dull but it has something down here where you can actually cut it and then this is the cool this is the
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coolest part so check this out so watch what happens with this head so
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the head when you squeeze the handle one finger comes down on the uh this
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side this side it holds the thick part of the wire and
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then this other finger on this side pulls the strips the wire for you
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so do it and see if we can get a slow motion here so it comes down the teeth grab it and
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then the back teeth pulls it off so
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you see how fast it is so you just put the wire in there actually I did it backwards hold on I'm
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gonna have to do it backwards because we're on camera all right so you put the wire in
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and then where that line is right here that is where you're going to strip it or that's where the strip is going to
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happen so let's see here
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oh there we go so it comes down and then it just see
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it just pulls it just pulls it off like that and the other part is right here when
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you let go it ejects it out
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so I'm going to cut a couple pieces of wire here just as example
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I'll show you how fast I can strip them
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so say you're in the van and you're up in the corner and you got your things you need to strip for your your lights
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you can just take it one one two three and then you got it done
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it's really really fast this thing is awesome so
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yeah just buy this I mean you can use it for your for your house too this uh this will strip solid wire that's 10 to
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20 gauge and then stranded wire which is this as stranded is this strands
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stranded wire is stranded wire is what you want to have
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in a van so when you go to we'll talk about some more wire here in a second but when you go to buy the welding wire
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for the big connections to the battery you want it stranded you don't want anything solid so
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um so Romex Cable in your home that's solid cable that's solid copper cable
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if you've ever stripped it like a Romex cable you notice that um
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it's a solid piece of copper it's not stranded and that's okay in a house because the house is not moving
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but in a van with everything moving stranded wire will allow more movement
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without weakening the joint so for example if you've ever had like a thin piece of metal let's see if I got a
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piece of metal [Music] um
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anyway the point I was making was if you have a piece of metal and you bend it back and forth a bunch of times if it's
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a solid piece of metal it'll eventually break but with the stranded cable it can take a lot of punishment I mean
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obviously you're not going to do that in a van but that's the point that's why you want to use it um
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with something like that all right let's throw this away let's go to the next
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tool again staying awesome
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okay so next tool
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uh 20 bucks I mean well worth its weight
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um so let's text out of that window let's go down to the next part
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so the next tool right here
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the next tool is
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this guy oh I'm gonna change the screen there you go
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so the next tool is a different type of wire stripper
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so this is a round cable stripper uh
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and the reason that you want to again this is uh I get kind of excited
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about these tools because they're so worth it
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um so this is a round cable stripper so this is what it looks like okay
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and let's go to some Amazon pictures maybe they'll they got some cool stuff
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so if you look you've got this little knife inside and that knife you can dial it higher or
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lower and I'll show you what that's for in just a minute this is what you use to actually
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open and close it to grab the wire and then as you guys can see here you
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can lower it to have the blade not shown and then the blade extends all the way up
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um we're not going to play the video because I'm going to show you all right leave it on the screen just
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for a second so you guys can see it all right back to me so this guy what you're going to do is
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you open this up and this is for your bit large round
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cable so right here we have some four ought
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welding cable doesn't matter if it's black or red that's more to help you when you're
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wiring your van but this cable you see my thickness of my finger
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this is an extremely thick cable this is what you want to use for battery terminal connection so going battery to
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battery to battery so like 100 amp hour battery to 100 amp hour battery
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um this is four out is good to use um on systems
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where you have well like I just said multiple batteries now the way now if you were you can't
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if you can't put this in here and strip it obviously so so what are you going to
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do well you could take a pair of this or your Cutters and you could
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somehow put it in here and then rotate this around or you could take a pair of you could
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take a box cutter and try to neatly cut around it the professional tool for the job is
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this okay and the reason is because this opens up your cable comes through
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and then depending on the thickness of this rubber that you're trying to remove
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that is what you're going to dial in the height of this
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the wheel okay so once you do that you just let it come
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down and you want to make sure that you are
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it doesn't matter what direction you're going in but you need to make sure that
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you're going evenly what can happen is if you kind of hold the cable you'll go like a it'll
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turn like a corkscrew and your cut won't be good I'm not saying I'm the perfect person to
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do this but just take it and go easy take your time that way you can just do
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it once you're not wasting cable now I don't know if this is set for this cable because I've been doing some
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van stuff I mean different stuff in the van okay let's see here
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so that's not enough so we're going to come down they're going to expose more of the blade
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try to get it close to our where we had it and then again we just want to come up
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and then we want to come back down okay
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now I'm just doing this for display purposes only so I may have damaged the cut the wire
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but you can see how it's cutting the wire
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okay let me see if I can just get this done
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yeah and it's not going to be you're going to have to practice at this [Music] um because every wire is a little bit
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different but the more you practice the more you can get good at it
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these thicker cables are much harder than the thin ones
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but all we're doing is we're just coming and we're just rotating around just pivoting around there
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and once we take it off we can see see how our copper is exposed and then we can just
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twist and see we've got a clean
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very clean and we didn't tear up our copper threads because we can dial in the distance
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and this is obviously too small but you get the point this you would slide this
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on and then comes now we come to our next tool so I'll give you a couple seconds
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to look on the screen get some info
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all right and so the next tool we're going to talk about would be the next step of this process and that is
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this guy
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so this is our hydraulic crimper so I'll come back for the information
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just hold on one second so the hydraulic crimper is really
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important because you can't manually crimp this um it would not make a good connection
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and it would be very dangerous because if you remember how we talked about the resistance of this cable not having a
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good connection this is critical this is a this is the most critical connection because the
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most current is going to go through here for example if you had four 100 amp hour
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batteries you had the potential of 400 amps
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being pulled through this one piece of cable so the connection between this and the
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terminal I hate that I'm using a baby terminal I've already I've used all the ones I
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have in the shop but the hydraulic this hydraulic crimper
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makes a extremely tight hydraulic connection
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so what's going to happen is you're going to put the uh
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you're going to put your a little lug so imagine this was a big
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one we're just doing a small one right now and it sits in here
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all right and that little die comes down and then it'll actually it'll actually
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kind of sit in there just like that so see this flare on the back that flare kind of holds it in there
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and then you need to watch it and just be careful but what will happen is uh
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you get this knob on the side and you just close it and then you're just going to pump
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and then what's going to happen is this uh
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die is going to close and it's going to eventually get to a point where it starts crushing
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the you can see there you go
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it starts crushing
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that joint and then once you're done you just take
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this valve release it see comes down
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and then when you remove it see it crimps it
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now obviously there'd be a wire in here I guess I should could have showed that to you guys
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um but then once you're done with this let me show you what product that is one
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more time so that is uh this guy
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hydraulic cable lug tool okay this is very important
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when you're on Amazon you know how things are pay attention that it is six gauge to four ought
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okay sure you got that see it makes it look makes a little crimp like that
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all right so now we can back up and let's talk about two things that we
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skipped so let's talk about this guy
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so this guy right here is the it's just a cable cutter
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but again what to pay pay attention to four ought because you want to make sure that you
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get the right one all these pictures kind of look the same you know Amazon there's C
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there's like a ton so you need to make sure that this is
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going to uh fit the wire that you're cutting
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so yeah you want to do four ought to get that info
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and so here's that cable here's the cutter and I was telling you about so it's not a small thing but
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um that would make sure that that diameter is big enough
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because you want to use this and I'm going to make a mess here but that's okay
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so when I cut this I'm going to show you why this is so important so when I cut this
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this is why you want to buy it look at this
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see how see how clean it's it cuts so clean that it's actually shiny
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and that's that's really important because you don't want this to be all frayed and busted because when you go to
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put it into your lug if it's all frayed it's not going to go
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in far enough and it's not going to make a good enough connection so
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yeah so this thing is awesome
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all right let's show you guys that let me leave it on the screen when I put this up
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thank you
24:20
okay so next thing we're going to go to
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is we're going to go to
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the heat shrink tubing
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all right and I'm going to give you guys a link because this is crazy
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it's crazy to write all that down um yeah we'll do a link later but you can write that down hold it on the
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screen for a second while I get my little example
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okay so coming back to me here we go so this is the heat shrink tubing
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and it comes in a box like this so you get all kinds of different sizes
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you got big ones small ones
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uh it's hard to tell sometimes online what you're getting
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I mean this this case of this heat string is 11 so if you get the wrong one you can just
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try again but you want to make sure that there is this uh this adhesive on the inside so I wonder
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if I could pick that up it's like a you'll look and there's like a glossy
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almost like a gel inside and what that is is when you put this over
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let's see if we do this all right just bear with me these are not all the sides but when you
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take your heat shrink tube and you put it over your lug and you go to use a heat gun
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to shrink the heat shrink you want the adhesive version of this so
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that it kind of oozes out it's like a clear gel that oozes out and it actually
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will seal so instead of just the compression of the heat shrink ceiling you're going to
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have the the gel come out the edge and that's really going to waterproof this joint
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it'll keep it from oxidizing you know keep it from rusting I mean not rusting but yeah oxidizing
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um because that can compromise the uh the wire connection
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so these things are yeah these come in a box it's super cheap
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all right so I'm getting ready to go back to the other screen here
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uh and then we're going to talk about this so these rolls are what I used for the
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bigger connections um here this is a good example see that
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like jail that's coming out that gel is you want to make sure the
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heat shrink tube has it I mean this stuff is dirt cheap but
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stuff that's even cheaper than this sometimes doesn't doesn't have that little gel and that gel adhesive I don't
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even know I don't know what it is it's just some type of almost like a glue almost like a hot glue
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it makes a really really good seal it's also kind of a visual indicator
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that you've got it hot enough to where you can stop heating it with a heat gun
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but yeah let's talk about this this roll so I'll go back here so this stuff this is pretty much all I
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have left of that but this stuff is great because let's
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just use this uh this black heat shrink for example
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you can kind of tell you're going to need something like this
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for your your bigger your bigger wires
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so you can see you're going to put that on your bigger wire and then that way
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this thing could be uh the terminal that you choose for it six
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gauge 4 ought two Watt um it'll be the right one
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and yeah these things come in rolls and I use this on my van
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and a little bit on the other van and this is what was left but I mean it's 10 bucks
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so we can't go wrong
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all right so there's a roll and then we're gonna go back to so let's
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go and check out it's the next thing I want to show you
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um let's talk about the lugs and then we'll we'll move on after this so lugs
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so here's the name of the lug we've got heavy duty Battle Ring battery ring terminal
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and this is for again very very very important for uh
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so four out is the first number and this 5 16 is the second number
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so what is that so let me show you
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let me get my drawing pad out here so I can show you guys basically the first number is the size
30:13
right here uh the barrel you would almost call it the lug end and then this 5 16 is this
30:21
whole diameter um yeah so let's go over here
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so you you'll have a
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so this is the wire lug and then it's kind of flared up here on the back
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and then the uh the terminal comes out kind of does its thing and it comes back
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in so this diameter is going to be the and just for
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this example this is the four ought
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and I know that's a zero but the terminology is odd
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so you get the uh that's the inner diameter is the four out so that allows that cable
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to uh go in and then you want your cable to kind of
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pretty much come about right there and then this ring right here
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so this diameter this is going to be the 5 16.
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now why that's so important that you get this right
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the reason that you want to get that whole diameter right is you want to make sure so you're going to have these things
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called uh
31:54
like a terminal block or a terminal post or something like that
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there's a diff there's many different ways you can do this but um let's just we're going to use a bus bar for this example so a bus bar
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is just a common point where multiple wires
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of the same uh polarity so for example like positive or
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negative let's just say that this is uh this is our negative bus bar
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so you can call it you know almost like your ground but
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aesthetically it's negative so say this is our negative bus bar
32:40
well these These are screws and you want to make sure
32:46
that this screw diameter
32:54
is equal to 5 16.
33:00
so that when you go to uh
33:06
put this on here
33:13
um that it's a that's a it's a perfect fit and you've got uh good contact area
33:19
so let's see here if I can do this
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okay so that contact area you want to make sure it's it's good
33:36
if you don't pay attention and you go on Amazon and you buy one that's a different size
33:42
so they say this is 5 16 and I bet if I go down here there's uh right here
33:48
so see the difference let's see how big that is so that would not be good
33:54
for example come back over here say you got that one that's wrong
34:00
well you'd have this much area that is not
34:06
contacting metal and so that wouldn't be a very efficient
34:11
system it also wouldn't be a very safe system okay I'll digress I'll go back here here
34:18
we go so a little lesson in why these two numbers are very important
34:25
that the wire is getting its home that it goes into it's comfortable with a four out and
34:31
four out and then the hole at the end 5 16th sometimes you'll see a quarter but make
34:37
sure that that matches your your bus bar here it looks like a bus bar real quick
34:47
okay this is the bus bar I'm talking about so as you can see
34:53
5 16 right so that one would be perfect 3 8
34:59
that would not work 5 16 great great
35:04
so you guys kind of you kind of get them a point
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all right so these guys are available on Amazon it's 20 bucks but you're getting 10.
35:16
you may ask well Nick that's kind of expensive this is a UL listed piece which is good
35:25
um there's a bunch of stuff that you can buy overseas and sometimes it's not pure copper
35:31
it will be 10 copper or it will be copper plated
35:38
um and it might it might look like copper but
35:43
it's not pure copper pure copper is going to give you the best um efficiency
35:53
so you want to go with pure copper
35:59
they're saying bear copper but they do have a
36:06
and then you can look here
36:12
so it's UL listed and there's the number UL stands for Underwriters Laboratory
36:19
and so they're an independent uh organization that tests stuff like this
36:24
and puts their stamp on it so you'll see a lot of it in the um electrical
36:31
field so if you can find is that let's see you
36:37
and L if you can find it you want to do that for the big stuff now
36:45
I'll kind of I might do some uh double speak here because when we get to
36:51
this low voltage Pat wire it's really not that big of a deal for stuff like LED lights
36:59
these these things are not that critical
37:05
all right so we talked about this tool this one this one I will come
37:10
back up to that one so before we get into this low voltage
37:16
stuff Let's uh well I know the 12 volts a
37:21
little voltage let's go back up here hmm let's go to okay all right
37:30
I'm getting you guys dizzy here all right so this is another crimping tool
37:36
oh actually we haven't talked about crimp tools so let's let's uh this is another one of
37:42
my tools that's a must-have so when you start to do your van
37:47
building you're going to be working with uh 12 volt items
37:54
and once you get all your 12 volt done then
37:59
you're going to hook your 12 volt up to possibly an inverter so an inverter is stepping up your 12
38:06
volts to 110 120 volts to power household Outlets that you may have in
38:12
the van so that's stuff to maybe power a microwave an induction stove
38:17
you know charge your laptop anything that needs household power that you want
38:22
to plug into it I mean even a toaster so while these tools right here are
38:30
excellent for 12 volt
38:36
wire you're going to need something to connect or start crimping your your AC
38:42
your alternating current components so like the 110 120 and that's what this crimper is right
38:49
here so you can see these uh I can't point it to you on screen but
38:56
each one of those spaces is for a different uh uh item or crimping
39:03
component it's called a feral so a feral fitting cleans up the end of a stranded wire
39:12
and if I can actually pull if I can get my feral kit
39:33
I might have to come back to this one um so imagine this
39:39
so get this partner head and then let's back up and we're going to go to a item that it
39:47
uh it's a or so let's go down to its little brother over here
39:52
so this is a tinier kit so we're gonna I recommend both
39:58
so we've got the big one for AC so household Mains power for example
40:06
the baby one right here and this is for 12 volt so I want you to look what's in here you
40:12
see these little there's these plastic caps with these little metal fittings
40:18
so what happens is the wire goes through each one of these depending on the
40:24
thickness of it and this little machine right here opens up right here it opens up
40:31
and it crimps the wire so you can kind of see here
40:38
see how we have in the top left we've got our tool
40:44
so we've got our tool right here that we that we bought that we strip The Wire we've got our ferrule
40:51
so this feral what it does is it encapsulates this stranded wire
40:59
you put it in there and when it crimps it or crushes it it makes it in this
41:05
really neat kind of shielded uh wire now what's nice about this
41:11
when you stick this into uh like a fuse box or any other place where
41:19
you're going to make this connection you don't have to worry about damaging these stranded wires and having them
41:25
break off or fall on the floor or anything like that it kind of gives it like an extra layer of protection and it
41:31
makes it have a better connection so you'll notice some of these actually go into
41:38
like an outlet or something that has a screw down terminal
41:45
so when the screw pushes on here this shielded ferrule will protect it
41:51
and it won't cut into the stranded wires um
41:57
so this is how true professionals uh
42:02
prep wire before making connections I'm not saying you can't do stranded
42:08
wire and then just do the old school twist it put it in and then crimp it down you can do that but you may want to
42:14
be able to do it one time when you take that out you may have cut the wire and uh
42:21
this is all really for safety um than anything else
42:28
so there's our crimper and I don't have that one with me
42:34
this was a pretty good illustration to show you guys how it works I think you got it
42:40
so imagine this one is just the big brother so this guy is going to use
42:46
uh bigger ferals so see this right here so this one this one and this one would
42:55
be used even this fourth one these would all be used for 12 volt
43:01
systems then uh
43:07
actually let me walk that back they can be used in any wire both 12
43:12
volt or the higher voltage this blue one right here is the one that
43:17
I actually used for my inverter on the van
43:23
so that way because as we talked about earlier all
43:29
these wires that are stranded wires so this protects it
43:35
so next let's go to a so we our two feral tools I think we got what they are
43:41
so this one is the uh cripper for the bigger ferrules
43:46
and then this one is the crimper for the smaller ferrules
43:52
and we're going to go over here to this so you know how we were talking about
43:58
120 volt wire so you need a
44:06
this is a 10 gauge 3 wire
44:16
so the 10 gauge 3 wire is like your household wire
44:21
so if you've ever wired a home and you go to Lowe's and you hear about 10 2 10
44:27
3 12 2 12 3 stuff like that what it's uh
44:33
referring to is the gauge of the wire so this one is 10 gauge and the three is
44:39
pretty obvious it's how many strands are coming out how many wires are coming out of it now notice this is
44:47
Marine stranded wire
44:52
because again if you guys remember in a van you don't want to use solid copper wire to do any of your wiring you want
44:59
to have stranded wire it's more flexible it's more resilient to uh vibration
45:05
stuff like that so right here we got our three wires
45:12
um and since we're dealing with higher voltage now let me click there we go since we're dealing with uh higher
45:19
voltage all right where are we there we go since we're dealing with higher voltage
45:24
uh we it's even more critical that our crimp connections are very sound
45:32
so we're going to use this crimper with
45:40
one of these blue ferrules so you see how this is six gauge
45:46
we haven't talked about this but I already have it in the cart to explain it so we got our six gauge
45:57
and uh so this is another challenge about buying stuff off of Amazon is because you're getting into different uh
46:04
I guess the words nomenclature um where you're getting millimeters
46:11
squared versus uh gauges of wire so
46:21
the uh you want to find you want to make sure you're getting ferals specific to the gauge
46:27
so six gauge ferrule there we go and then we're going to back up and we're
46:32
going to do we're going to go to our six gauge wire
46:39
okay so it makes sense you're you're finding stuff the reason I'm going so deep into it is
46:45
Amazon puts so many words here and it can kind of get confusing So within this video again we'll have
46:51
links so you guys can just buy the stuff this is this is the exact stuff that I bought for the vans that I build so
46:58
you're getting exactly what I used I've already vetted this stuff I've used it so I feel pretty good about it
47:05
um so now that we have our three wires we have our ferrule that's on there
47:12
that allows us to safely connect it to our output of our inverter
47:20
that's why this kind of choices that I'm presenting to you guys that is this is going to help you kind of lay the
47:26
foundation to get that power system up and running all right so we got that we understand
47:32
this wire we understand the crimper for this is this all fits the 12 volt stuff
47:39
this fits our LED lights all kinds of stuff like that
47:45
um we talked about the big crimper so since we're on the topic of wiring
47:53
let's go down here um here I'll go slow that way you guys can see we've actually gone through this
47:59
so we've gone through that up the top this piece this piece
48:05
our insulation are we in our heat shrink our cable Cutters our hydraulic crimper
48:13
we've talked about our AC wire so our 10 3 wire that's Stranded
48:20
the marine grade our smaller crimper our lug
48:26
all right so now we get into the fun stuff so when I call it fun stuff because
48:33
this is the low voltage wiring that you're going to use for your LED lights and your ceiling probably your little 12
48:41
volt light switches and stuff like that um this is the stuff that's not carrying
48:47
heavy current it's not used to charge anything um
48:53
and yes I do say that with an asterisk you can use this to power like a USB
49:00
port to charge maybe your phone but don't expect it to charge uh like fast charging and stuff
49:07
like that um you'll need to find out how much current your fast charger
49:12
is pulling to make sure that your wire is sized appropriately we'll talk about that in a whole other video
49:19
but the reason this is fun is this is just kind of the the wire that you can kind of put everywhere do all your
49:25
lights in your ceiling some switches you know Lights under your cargo area
49:31
um and what's nice is again it's just so cheap
49:37
and so this is what it looks like it's just a big ball of black and red wire
49:45
yeah so you see here they have a picture of it you know powering an LED strip
49:51
so right here you guys are learning some stuff this is a 22-2 wire so that's 22
49:58
gauge two and I know this is this is probably not
50:03
something we should put in the video but I'm just going to go ahead and do it um best
50:09
fuse for 22 AWG wire
50:19
so if you go on Google and it says what size fuse for 22 gauge wire now this is just for an example purpose
50:25
only just so I can kind of show you what that means
50:30
that thin wire 22 gauge this guy right here all right
50:37
only three to six amps so very very little
50:43
so three to six amps for this wire
50:52
this wire 400 okay
50:57
so you see see the difference
51:04
so only use this for low voltage tiny stuff
51:11
okay A little mini mini lesson there um
51:17
okay so you get a whole ball 65 feet of this um I actually this one thing lasted me
51:23
like two vans it's pretty pretty good
51:29
and then I found this right here this thing is awesome I thought it was a
51:37
joke I was like yeah it's it's a it's too good to be true so what this
51:43
does is this allows you to tap into an existing power wire
51:52
that you're running in your van okay that's a that's a loaded question if you
51:58
guys are if anyone is new I don't want you using this like I just said let me let me draw it
52:06
okay so let's just say you have you've got um power wire running through your van
52:13
let's do this all right you got a power wire
52:21
got a power wire running through your van so what this does is let's say this
52:29
right here this right here is uh powering um
52:36
let's just say this is like a light okay so this one's powering like a light
52:41
it's a terrible light it's powering the light and then your battery is over here so what you want to
52:48
do is you you need to make four connections here
52:55
so before what you would do is what you would cut this then you'd cut this and then you'd you
53:02
know crimp this to this and then you'd crimp this you'd use like one two three
53:09
four five you probably use like six crimps one two three four five six
53:15
so six crimps to make this one connection to this other light so these are all light bulbs right here
53:25
all right I can do better let's clean all this up just
53:35
there we go
53:42
so you got these light bulbs up here so you need to make these connections
53:49
all right so
53:55
what this does uh oh there we go what this does is it
54:04
just snaps on The Wire and then you put the other wire in the back of it and you snap it down and
54:10
that's it you're done it was so awesome I had like six lights in my my personal van
54:17
that I put in and one I didn't have the room to really
54:23
uh whenever you're working on the ceiling of the van I'm going to prep you guys if
54:29
you haven't done this this anything that your hands are stretched up above your head it's the it's the hardest job it
54:36
doesn't matter what tricks I do or tools that I have when you're wiring above your head the
54:41
shorter time it can take to do that the better so
54:46
what that thing this thing does right here okay just memorize this
54:52
picture in your head and then go over here okay so what it does is
54:58
it will come over here and we'll grab those two wires and it'll
55:04
grab these two wires so it'll connect these two and it'll connect these two
55:10
and that little box so one snaps over the wire and then one
55:16
snaps and then all you have to do is you just click it click it click it
55:27
and uh yeah yeah Drew these things are awesome
55:32
they're they're really really cool um hold on a second I gotta sign in to
55:39
chat
55:52
yes these are great um
55:57
let me back up back up messed up okay
56:05
yeah every now and then you find something that's really awesome so that'll be we'll do a link to that
56:12
and then so I use those two and then I use this
56:17
uh oh wait we're not done yet hold on and then for my longer not longer runs
56:25
but my more critical runs so only use this wire
56:31
for uh this like stuff like this right here like these things
56:38
see right here we'll talk about these in just a second these kind of cheap
56:43
uh LEDs just use it for these okay see the wire
56:51
okay we'll get back to this in a second for your switches so 12 volt switches in
57:01
the van or maybe some more uh
57:07
what am I trying to say anything that's a switching circuit now
57:13
this is my personal opinion this is this is not anything I read it's just stuff after doing the research and stuff you
57:20
know I want to build stuff to where it's you know usually always slightly over
57:25
built so that the longevity you're not having an issue with it
57:30
um it also just comes down to safety because I mean the last thing you want is just a thought in your mind that
57:37
maybe you wired something wrong in the van or you go to park the van
57:42
for the winter or whatever and you're just getting peace of mind so
57:48
what we've done is we've gone from a 22 gauge wire and we've bumped it up to 16
57:54
gauge so since I've been teaching you guys about gauges in this live stream which
58:01
is supposed to be about Amazon Parts but hey no time like the present
58:06
the gauge the the lower the number the thicker the wire so it's very backwards that's
58:13
that's why it's difficult for people to um you know get the concept uh
58:21
because the lower the number the thicker The Wire uh yeah it's just sometimes hard to have
58:28
graphs and then the two here this is a
58:33
um yes Drew overdoing the wire is probably good so don't
58:39
don't feel like you have to over overdo it so what I'm talking about is go from like a 22 gauge to like a 16. you know
58:46
you don't you don't need this empowering your your ceiling lights
58:52
um but if you go to oh there we go so when you go to a 16 gauge wire uh
59:01
you also are able to get something that like this that's more that's that's shielded better
59:08
and the shielding helps you pull it through the van
59:14
um if you look really close let's see here okay if you guys can see right here
59:23
you have an outer white coating I mean a white you know plastic and then you have
59:28
the uh our Rubber and then you get the inside so you got this double layer of
59:33
protection so if you nick this white part not it's very unlikely that you've damaged
59:39
the inside of the wire that's why using this Marine stuff is really nice
59:45
um okay so this is kind of a rule of thumb
59:51
when you're building in a van just treat it like your uh doing stuff on a boat or
59:57
a yacht or anything like that it's the same thing it's just instead of being in the water you're you
1:00:03
know you got four tires um but but pretty much all the other principles are the same because you're
1:00:09
going to have you have all the stuff inside of a van it's it's humid because you're you know
1:00:16
breathing inside of it it's uh it gets really cold I guess really hot um
1:00:21
it's moving and so that's why Marine stuff just fits kind of hand in hand with van components
1:00:30
the cool part is you can find stuff on Amazon that's pretty reasonably priced
1:00:35
so this is the uh this is 50 feet of 16 2
1:00:43
and yeah this stuff is just good to you know pull out through the van use it for your light switches use it for
1:00:51
um you know maybe bigger lights like if you have some type of like uh
1:00:57
desk light or something like that that's not just a simple LED
1:01:04
you could use this to power like Quick Charge USB devices something that you want to run just a little bit more
1:01:10
amperage through so if we go here and let's just change our query to 16.
1:01:18
so we went from three to six amps and now we're all the way up to 15
1:01:23
amps so um and I would say most car wiring
1:01:31
is about a 15 usually about 10 to 15 amps that you can put pull through there
1:01:36
so you see you went from like three to three to eight all the way up to 15.
1:01:43
um and one thing you may want to do my lose my place on here
1:01:50
uh there we go so one thing you may want to do is it's not necessary that you're
1:01:56
over sizing a system but say you had a so you had
1:02:02
two or three 22 amp circuits I mean sorry 22 gauge wire runs
1:02:08
but then you had 10 that are 16 gauge you might as well just do the whole van
1:02:14
for those specific areas just 16 gauge that way when you go to
1:02:19
fuse the line you'll just have a handful of 15 amp fuses you won't have 15 10 5
1:02:27
you know seven and a half you'll you only have like one fuse for all those
1:02:32
runs um okay I have to
1:02:39
put a caveat to that that is uh
1:02:44
when you do that you're only doing it for stuff that uh if it demanded more than 15 amps it
1:02:51
would damage it so for example if you were running the circuit
1:02:57
with a 22 gauge wire like those lights you need to fuse that uh
1:03:04
either fuse needs to be sized to whatever it is running so that little
1:03:11
LED light the little Puck Light in your ceiling let's say the max wattages on on that is like
1:03:19
uh three and three amps all right so you might fuse that at five for
1:03:25
example you would not fuse it at 15 because if that unit failed
1:03:31
you'd never blow the fuse and you'd have a live failure over here so you want to
1:03:37
make sure that if it does fail by pulling too much current too much current through it that the
1:03:44
fuse actually fails so we can do that in another live stream
1:03:50
that we're going to get and kind of on a tangent here
1:03:55
um let me back up
1:04:03
let's see here okay so we got that we got that
1:04:10
um here's the lugs so you can actually uh buy them with the heat shrink in the
1:04:18
kit which is pretty nice so this actually comes with the heat shrink and the lugs together
1:04:23
it's not bad um and then probably should have gone
1:04:28
over this first this is the main uh
1:04:33
copper wire also referred to as welding wire for the van
1:04:39
they call it welding wire because of it's used for welding leads for welding
1:04:47
um or you can use it because the amount of current that it can can hold
1:04:52
uh so the what I um use is a windy Nation so if you go on
1:05:00
Amazon type of windy Nation uh they have some pretty legit stuff I've been happy
1:05:05
with what they what they have online what's really nice about what they
1:05:10
provide is they don't only give you just one black or red Cable in a specific
1:05:17
length they give you um
1:05:25
multiple links and multiple colors so you can do 20 feet of black 20 feet of red in an order 200 feet of black 200
1:05:33
feet of red in order like that okay and then you can also
1:05:39
um these are six gauge cable you would just just highlight this copy it change this
1:05:45
to eight gauge 2 watt four odd etc for for that
1:05:53
um all right so we're going to get to the video here um and we're going to talk about
1:06:00
just some just some extra things that I thought about when um I looked all this up so I had all
1:06:06
these kind of core things and then these items I'm about to show you is what I bought with those items
1:06:16
so what I so right here this feral I needed to purchase that I needed to
1:06:22
purchase this separate so these didn't come into a kit these were individually purchased one I needed for a 10 gauge
1:06:28
wire one I needed for a six gauge [Music]
1:06:33
um if you guys are working on a van
1:06:39
this may be the number one tool
1:06:44
for Van building this is a rivnut gun
1:06:49
if you guys don't know what a rivnut tool is uh some it goes by the name of
1:06:55
plus nut rib nut um
1:07:00
there's one other term for it but anyway what this does
1:07:05
is let's pull up this picture so the way this works is say you have a
1:07:13
piece of sheet metal so this is a we're going to for this purposes we're gonna okay let's go the drawing
1:07:19
let's draw this so let's say you're in the van right
1:07:26
and the van on the interior has sheet metal okay and it's got ribs up here all right
1:07:34
so this sheet metal and we're specifically talking about this layer
1:07:41
say you want to mount something to it so what you can do is you can drill a hole into it
1:07:49
and then you can take this rivnut tool and so what we're going to do is okay
1:07:58
we're going to take this and we're going to zoom in okay so we're zoomed in
1:08:03
and we have drilled our hole and okay pull up the fancy engineer here
1:08:13
and get our hole okay actually
1:08:24
so we have our hole in here
1:08:29
man go back in time to figure out how to
1:08:35
anyway we got our hole so what the rivnut tool does is the the
1:08:42
rib nut looks like this it's got a flange on it
1:08:49
on the inside it has it is a tap for a certain thread in this
1:08:57
case it's 5 16-18 2
1:09:02
there you go 5 16-18
1:09:12
that is the thread that is the bolt so if you went to
1:09:18
Lowe's and you went to buy a bolt
1:09:30
you would buy a 5 16 18 bolt
1:09:36
and that bolt will fit in here so the bolt will actually come in here
1:09:44
like that
1:09:57
all right just like that something like that okay
1:10:03
so this blue part okay this is the sheet metal right there
1:10:12
so this little nut insert not not this so forget forget about that
1:10:19
this this piece right here I drew them both the same color
1:10:24
that goes inside so that piece let's get over here
1:10:35
so you screw that piece onto the end of the rib nut tool
1:10:40
then you insert it into that hole which is right here
1:10:48
that's your hole that you're inserting into and then when you clamp down on the gun
1:10:57
what's happening is squishing that nut
1:11:04
so it's squishing it and so this part right here
1:11:12
starts to squish like that
1:11:17
and it holds it in there and then when you're finished
1:11:24
you can uh
1:11:30
you can have uh this is really hard to see on here I know
1:11:36
when you're finished you can actually put the uh
1:11:41
put this nut into the hole so this right here will be threaded and
1:11:48
then you can put the nut in there and you know bolt something to the wall not sure if that was a good example or
1:11:54
not but um there will be a future video
1:11:59
in a van where we'll take the rib nut gun and we'll show you exactly how it works
1:12:09
all right getting to the end here so there's our rivnut gun
1:12:14
um let's reset this
1:12:22
okay rev nut gun um we talked about our LED lights right
1:12:28
here so these are just some recessed boat LED lights
1:12:35
the only thing to pay attention here is the color temperature so do you guys
1:12:40
want warm light cool light warm and cool is two different things
1:12:46
warm is more yellow cool is more blue
1:12:57
all right
1:13:02
and then let's get to just a tad bit of solar so whenever you're doing this circuit for solar one thing that
1:13:10
somebody misses um thread locker and rivnut
1:13:15
oh yes sometimes uh so let me get back to Drew here
1:13:23
so I would say it's okay to put a just like
1:13:30
some blue thread Locker just a tiny dab on something you're putting into the the rivnut
1:13:35
what you probably experienced was if you act this is very this is very
1:13:40
hard I do it all the time but when you drill the hole if the drill is vibrating that hole is
1:13:47
just I'm talking ever so slightly just a little too big and what happens is when
1:13:53
you go to crimp down on the rib rib nut uh even though it crimps really well the
1:14:00
surface that it has to grab onto since that diameter is bigger is less so it'll
1:14:05
kind of want to turn on you so when you like you said when you uh put thread Locker on that nut
1:14:12
and you're trying to pull it out it just it breaks that that uh grip that the
1:14:18
compression of the rib nut head on the sheet metal I'm thinking that's what you're talking about
1:14:23
um because unfortunately whenever that happens you're gonna have to drill that out and then you know put another one in
1:14:30
so if you've done that before you probably already know that but what I would do in that case is
1:14:37
um if it is the what I'm talking about with this rib nut gun
1:14:43
uh crimp it down in there and if you don't think you did it well open it back up kind of tighten it up just a little
1:14:50
bit more and then go in there one more time and really get a good compression
1:14:56
uh because I guess what I'm saying is I do believe in Loctite so I wouldn't say that
1:15:02
you shouldn't use it but what you can do and also you may already know this but
1:15:08
just use a use a lock washer those don't hold as tightly as a
1:15:15
um oh yeah it turned on it was forever stuck yeah yeah it stinks well
1:15:22
hopefully hopefully you were able to move it to a different location or um maybe just had to leave it there so
1:15:29
uh yep I definitely know how you feel um
1:15:35
so real quick let's talk about uh solar safety
1:15:42
so it has to do with this this product right here
1:15:48
this is not made for solar panels but if you guys uh
1:15:55
what is the name of that channel
1:16:04
I'm losing my thought here there's a there's a DIY channel that
1:16:11
teaches about electrical components it'll come to me in a second but this is a specific item that he recommended for
1:16:17
um as a breaker for your solar coming in most people just directly wire their
1:16:23
solar right into their solar charge controller and there's no there's there's not you
1:16:31
need to have a um a combined like a dual I think this is a
1:16:39
dual pole but they're they're combined so a breaker for for your solar
1:16:46
so what this breaker does is it is it's both it's a positive and a negative
1:16:53
breaker yes explorers.life thank you thank you drew yes yes yes yes
1:16:59
that is what it is yeah explorers.life and he
1:17:07
recommended this and so I've used it in the Vans I've done since
1:17:12
and what it allows it to do is typically a breaker is on uh
1:17:18
one circuit but the thing with solar solar is different you have both negative and
1:17:23
positive feeds coming in that need to be broken at the same time um
1:17:29
normally you're negative in a household situation would be your common wire
1:17:35
so really your your hot wire or the positive is what is being broken in the
1:17:41
circuit in a home but on a van you need a special breaker for the solar that can
1:17:47
be that can break both positive and negative circuits at the same time
1:17:52
and this is what it looks like
1:18:00
if I go let's see here back up so and then uh
1:18:07
so this is also uh the channel explorers.life this is the box that he
1:18:13
recommended that you use with it so that you can enclose it and then there's this rail this little
1:18:20
rail inside so that rail it just Clips right into there you shut the door and
1:18:25
it this actually even comes with these cable glands so these white cable
1:18:30
glands so it's a really neat system again
1:18:36
what's exciting about the stream is this is all Amazon stuff so it's uh
1:18:41
you know it's a very uh very inexpensive but but it's good stuff
1:18:47
so I both I purchased this one and this box and it just helps you because
1:18:52
um so one thing here I'll give you an example uh we were working on
1:18:58
well Thomas was using his van and uh we were uh
1:19:07
the reason that okay we wanted we wanted to do a full reset on the system
1:19:13
and I had the breaker in there and so what's nice about when when you'd want to do a full system reset
1:19:21
uh okay I got my train of thought here so we put so much solar on top of his roof that even when we disconnected the
1:19:28
main power system without shutting off the solar panels the solar panels on a
1:19:35
sunny day or provide enough power to keep the fridge running and some other items so
1:19:42
it was it was funny because you turned the system off but the system's still on because there's there's that much power coming
1:19:49
in from the solar um so but if you didn't have that system
1:19:57
you would not you'd not be able to fully turn off your system so you can see how dangerous that is not by not be able to
1:20:03
fully disconnect that power uh because if you don't know it solar panels are always on they're always on
1:20:10
they're not any bit of light that goes in there is creating that electricity
1:20:17
so if you have solar panels on your roof and you know you have those wires inside
1:20:23
those are live if they're not being covered up why are doing the install so
1:20:28
quick Pro tip get some pieces of cardboard when you're installing solar panels on your roof and just keep them covered you know make sure there's no
1:20:35
light in there when you're working on it but having a breaker like this that is
1:20:41
going to allow you to fully fully turn the system off I know
1:20:47
you have a full disconnect of the power
1:20:52
um let's see here and then uh yeah you can actually buy solar panels
1:20:58
um and you can buy renergy solar panels on on uh Amazon
1:21:05
and I like to buy stuff on Amazon as a builder because of this thing right here the date I can
1:21:13
kind of I can better predict when it's going to get to me uh if I if I if I order through
1:21:20
manufacturers it's it's it's hard to know when something's coming
1:21:25
um and it's kind of a kind of a pain in the butt you can't kind of plan things
1:21:31
so uh and then let's see here and then last but not least we have our
1:21:37
disconnect um so
1:21:42
this disconnect this is okay this is one I have in my personal van so I wanted to show you one that I would say is okay
1:21:48
I've used it for three years haven't had any problems with it um but
1:21:55
uh we're gonna for other builds um I step it up a little bit and I use a
1:22:00
different one but if you're on a super tight budget this one is is one that
1:22:07
I've used it's extremely important that you watch you look at the current rating
1:22:13
this one is uh 455 amps
1:22:19
12 volts so that's really important you do that um but
1:22:25
if you go to uh let's go to uh blue
1:22:32
C systems uh
1:22:38
battery disconnect
1:22:46
it's a Blue Sea Systems uh highly highly recommend no affiliation but I highly recommend
1:22:53
pretty much all the van components you put in there I would just default use blue c I just I
1:23:01
really like that I can go onto their manufacturer's website I can get the
1:23:07
exact specifications on the max amperage I can get like engineering drawings
1:23:13
schematics on how that's that circuit works and I know if I just have
1:23:19
everything that if I needed to check or if I had a question about adding a component say like a new fridge or like
1:23:25
uh um I don't know like switches to control like an inverter or something like that
1:23:31
like I would be able to go to a technical document and reference it
1:23:36
uh and know what it know what what they're talking about so but as you can see we go from 14 to
1:23:44
like a hundred dollars um or 63.
1:23:50
but I mean if this is what's you know controlling uh the power for your whole entire van
1:23:57
I could you could probably see how 63 is probably no big deal
1:24:02
um so what's nice about this one is uh we get a little bit of boost where's
1:24:08
the specs um we get a little bit of boost in
1:24:15
amperage so we can I think it can do like an
1:24:21
intermittent 600 amps Max 48 volts but we're always doing a 12 volt build
1:24:27
at the current moment but what blue blue c also has
1:24:35
this thing um so I'm just going to give you an example
1:24:42
okay I'm just giving you an example of what we did uh
1:24:47
this is a technical thing to do so if you're a DIY or maybe
1:24:52
don't do this because this has to do with combining two different chemistries
1:24:59
of batteries for a momentary charge let me explain
1:25:06
so we put in Thomas's van a Blue Sea
1:25:11
Systems battery combiner and we did this as a safety item so he
1:25:19
has a wheelchair lift on the outside of his van
1:25:24
and one thing that I wasn't comfortable about was when uh when he was using that it was
1:25:31
connected one it was connected to the engine battery so let's just say
1:25:37
the engine battery was weak he's going in and out of the van and then it just dies
1:25:43
so there wasn't a backup plan for him to have additional power yet he has 400 amp
1:25:51
hours of lithium iron phosphate in the back of his van that he would not have access to
1:25:57
so what I thought about was I was like there's there needs there has to be a safe way to temporarily just combine the
1:26:04
batteries and uh I kind of thought about um
1:26:09
again the Marine industry uh like uh like going fishing with my dad and the relationship between like the
1:26:17
the this the boat we had we hit a trolling motor and then there's a motor in the back
1:26:22
and then sometimes on these boats uh you know like fishermen are out there if
1:26:29
you guys are a fishermen you'll go and then say you actually killed the battery well if you have like a trolling motor
1:26:34
battery hooked up to the Circuit you could combine the battery system use
1:26:39
that to start the engine again and then get home so what I did is I just said hey why
1:26:44
don't I just do that to um
1:26:50
to this so what I did is okay first here's the disclaimer
1:26:55
uh you it is not good to combine different
1:27:01
battery chemistries so if you have lead acid or AGM or gel
1:27:07
those or do not play happy with lithium because one they're they uh they have
1:27:13
different voltages that they like to be at lithium is higher
1:27:19
[Music] um and so uh it just they're not happy and
1:27:25
you can can cause problems but if you're an emergency situation and you need to just use it for two minutes
1:27:33
and your system is properly fused to where you know you could do that safely
1:27:39
then this battery combiner is what we used on his van and so the uh
1:27:45
the theory is if the main battery every go dies then he can just turn to his
1:27:51
right hand side combine the batteries just for a minute to get out of the van come out and then
1:27:57
reconnect it and then jump start the band and get going so just very momentary I'm saying
1:28:02
maybe like 30 seconds to a minute just enough to continue that motor working
1:28:10
let me pause for a second look at the chat here uh
1:28:18
okay so he's got a switch that he's using if that's cool I'll have to have to check on that and we'll have to check
1:28:24
on the new Switch um
1:28:29
all right
1:28:35
uh and then this uh this last bit of stuff down here we've
1:28:40
got you know just some simple uh USB charger stuff like this very DIY
1:28:48
friendly to hook up charge your phone stuff like that um
1:28:53
there are blue C systems circuit breakers if you need those you can have there's all kinds of different amperage
1:29:00
for whatever circuit um you've got a dimmer switch cable glands
1:29:07
all that good stuff so yeah a lot of good stuff that you can find
1:29:12
on YouTube um we don't get too many people in the chat
1:29:18
now uh Drew you might be the only one in the chat but uh yeah um we can do a little q a if you guys uh
1:29:25
or if you want to uh if you have any other questions before we uh in this live stream today
1:29:32
um so that's pretty much all I have for the uh the Amazon stuff
1:29:38
um it's got me thinking of a lot of other ideas so maybe patching up the uh putting in some
1:29:43
future live streams uh like little modules where it is like a like a couple of parts that
1:29:51
I put together for a certain system in the van and then doing kind of a recommendation for you guys on that
1:29:57
um another thing I can do is kind of walk you through uh oh man true that's a
1:30:04
great question any advice on shower pans uh your question may have uh made my
1:30:13
decision on this van back here so
1:30:18
foreign s
1:30:24
so in this van uh in another stream I will do a
1:30:31
uh well I'll do my little headset thing so you can actually walk in the van but uh
1:30:37
yeah this is this is the coolest thing um so I've been back and forth on this van
1:30:43
whether I'm going to put in a shower our enclosed shower or not
1:30:50
and so I had two ideas my first idea was I actually
1:30:57
bought a um I bought a stainless steel mop basin
1:31:06
and that you would be able to walk into and use as a shower so that is an option
1:31:14
um it's hard to get to right now we might do this another video but so I my second option was I went to
1:31:22
Rec Pro and I purchased this so this is a 24 by
1:31:30
30 inch shower pan and uh I mean it's extremely cheap but
1:31:37
this is um it's all it needs to be because when
1:31:44
I build the walls um you know this is literally just to catch
1:31:51
water so I think this is maybe three inches deep
1:31:57
um if you look on the bottom here see how it has all these cups and so that allows it to
1:32:04
um you know have like a stable Foundation and then it has just a basic drain right
1:32:11
here uh so I'm sure that
1:32:17
uh doing a uh a build out on this pan
1:32:22
so it's hard for me to have a recommendation because I haven't done one yet this would be my first
1:32:27
shower other than building a residential shower or bathroom and a home that's
1:32:34
what I've done but um it's pretty much the same thing in the van the the only thing in the van
1:32:40
that I would say okay so let's just say I recommended this shower pan for you the next complications is the is how how
1:32:49
high are you going to build this platform off the van so that you can get the plumbing uh to be able to drain
1:32:56
and then also you know what tank you're gonna what are you gonna use a gray water tank are you going to kind of uh
1:33:02
really DIY it maybe have like going into you know a bucket or something like that
1:33:09
um but advice on shower pins I think this one for rec Pro is going to work really well it's very simple
1:33:15
uh the other one I bought that I would I was talking to you about it uh
1:33:21
I wonder if I can bring it over there the thing is heavy
1:33:27
uh let's see nope nope that thing is under a bunch of stuff
1:33:36
so it was a um uh
1:33:44
let's see here it was a musty see here
1:33:53
mop sink stainless
1:34:00
yep here we go here you go okay you may laugh but
1:34:05
at the time I thought this was a pretty good idea so this is what I was going to use
1:34:13
because not only was it stainless but it gave me enough height over the
1:34:20
floor uh as you can see right here to
1:34:26
get the plumbing in without having to build a uh a thing you
1:34:32
know something like that the only problem was it just it
1:34:38
everything in a van comes down to like millimeters like you really got to
1:34:44
use every single bit of space possible and
1:34:50
if you have a component like this in the van it kind of takes over everything in the van and then
1:34:57
everything is just kind of trying to deal with it um so when I'm doing this van uh behind me
1:35:06
oh yeah so this is this is the thing that I bought this one no this is a small one they have one
1:35:13
it's a much much bigger
1:35:19
2028 it was like the 30
1:35:25
. anyway it's the same same thing it was pretty much one of these
1:35:31
um and that's what it looks like when you're standing in it but this height right here you know
1:35:38
six inches that's that's a lot you're taking a lot of the the head room out and
1:35:46
like you were saying most people um yep like you're saying most people
1:35:51
put a platform down to kind of control where uh
1:35:57
to uh to kind of control where um the their the Plumbing's going
1:36:05
but yeah uh yeah that platform yeah definitely let me know how it works out
1:36:10
um a shower pan in the center walkway and putting wood planks over it with a wrap around curtain okay okay so
1:36:18
it kind of like built in the floor that's cool um yeah I'd say built in the floor debt
1:36:25
I think that's perfectly fine uh I think a lot of people get wrapped up in thinking that everything in the van has
1:36:33
to be you know insulated so that thickness of the insulation say like it's an inch or maybe you do two
1:36:39
inch and then half inch of the floor um you know that pan
1:36:46
uh that's not going to be a significant place of you know uh
1:36:52
heat loss especially if you have like a diesel heater or gas fire heater in the van
1:36:58
um yeah so uh yeah Drew I guess I'm gonna have to build that shower in here right
1:37:05
show you how I do it and then you can you can let me know how yours goes um
1:37:10
yeah uh I wait a couple seconds let me know if you have uh one more question here
1:37:16
and then we will probably uh call tonight
1:37:21
see if anything comes in real quick
1:37:45
all right all right guys well I hope you enjoyed
1:37:50
this live stream we will be um putting in the links in the comments
1:37:55
below um it'll probably take a day to put those in and then uh that way you guys can check out the stuff on Amazon
1:38:02
um then again as usual if you have any questions put those in the comments below be happy to put that in a future
1:38:09
video and answer those questions and uh that'll end the live stream tonight and
1:38:14
we'll see you guys in the next one [Music]
1:38:23
thank you
#Home Improvement
#Construction & Power Tools