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Ok next on the list is the roof awning extension plates, then the gearbox shifter top plate and brass bush upgrade, followed by 30mm spacers on top of rear springs, I am looking at what junk I can remove to reduce weight but at present everything I carry gives me peace of mind and it's only used for camping, not a daily drive
OK, been up at the mine required some retail therapy so went searching for an appropriate ammeter for the car, want to measure current to both the main battery and the lithium bank. The current draw is high by normal standards due to the pumps and fans in the system. I settled on two of these, Enerdrive EPro, rated at 500amps continuous, 600 peak, range of additional features can be plugged into the smart shunt device, including battery temperature. Expensive, bought mine from MDC Caravan supplier at $315 each, best I could find, even with EOY specials. They fit the standard 2" pressed metal gauge mounts so easy to mount. Challenge is I actually have 3 cables I want to measure, main battery, aux cable to regulated feed to lithium bank and then bypass feed to lithium bank for a more rapid charge. The bank can be charged at up to 250amps, but the Victron parallel charge controllers limit this to 120amps. The highest draw is from the coffee machine at circa 120 amps at 12V DC into the inverter. I prefer to open the pipe and boost the flow using the alternator as the meter gate for the period of operating the coffee m/c simply to land at the highest residual voltage post operation. Anyway I will decide what is more important after running the system for a while.Enerdrive.png
OK, first device installed. The device has a different approach to measurement of Current to what I was expecting, more so because it is used as a total battery management module rather than a straight current meter. I connected the cables as directed and then could only get a maximum of 20 amps showing on the device, variable to a degree based on my switching lights and fans etc on and off. This threw me and I went back and forth to the paperwork, watched a couple of Youtube displays and then finally cottoned on the output was actually the amperage that was being supplied to the battery in excess of what was being drawn from it. A call to the Enerdrive technician confirmed this.
So if the draw is 50 amps from devices on line, the device still measures the depletion and also the required current that needs to restore the battery to original storage capacity, hence it could decide the alternator needs 20 amps to restoire the battery capacity and 50 amps for the actual live load. Instead of indicating the current modulation at 70 amps, it simply shows what state of charge is being distributed to the battery. So, its probably going to take a bit for the brainbox to get around this algorthym doing the calculation, and how it meshes with the DCDC units as well as the alternator is beyond me - not going to try and understand it.
I have installed the main battery set up and its doing what it needs to. The comms cable is run from the second display down to the rear pod, however there is 20000 mins of body torture I suspect to configure the smart shunt in-line with the battery bank negative connection. Time will tell if this delivers the certainty I am looking for - suspect it will.
I also resolved the 'fast idle' configuration for the motor. Brunswick removed the hand throttle device from the original set up on the 2.8TD at time of conversion, said it could not be made to work. Anyway I have gone around the block 50 times on this with all sorts of potential solutions but realised they had once again stated a load of crap, so I purchased an in- tact accelerator cable/pedal assy and swapped over the throttle cable and knob to the Patrol pedal and despite there being a difference in the cable length - just had to add a crimped split shot to the cable to resolve, I get circa 250rpm idle speed increase for warm up idle and winch speed, happy days. The assy I have appears to operate like a choke where the cable pulls straight out, where my Diahatsu Scat was a rotaty device so the speed could be locked in place - is there a different set up for the diesel motors?
OK, couple of small steps completed since coming home off roster. The Enerdrive units are both installed and working. I also added 150amp range digital meters to monitor the parallel feeds from the Victron XS DCDC units into the 400ah litium bank. This has been tricky and there appeared to be a charging issue or syncronisation however turns out one of the digital ECMS ammeters is faulty, cant pull a trick at the moment, so another unit is on the way. The Victron units required a phone call to tech support to set up, but very helpful guy, the APP confirms essentially parallel feed at 48 amps per controller, so all good.
Added the starter battery boost unit today, kicks the engine over at a great rate of knots.
OK so the issue with the ECMS digital Ammeter was a dicky wire connection - my fault. The Victron units are quite touchy regarding how they charge from the front battery to the rear bank, so it can take 20 mins for the charge to stop going from the crank battery to the rear - it falls away pretty quickly but eventually gets to zero as expected.
I swapped out the factory plastic bushes under the TD42 gearstick with the brass units from PAP design. Simple enough task and took about 1 hr all up taking it slow. The intent originally was to also change out the top mount plate, however after applying a couple of angle grinder cuts to the hole around where the gearstick sits, still could not easily reach the front two bolts, so just fitted the bush into the factory housing, nice and snug. The gearstick end bush also was a neat fit into the cup in the top of the gearbox. The original main bush is spherical and had a bit of slop. The new bushes align everything nice and tight, next to no wobble at rest, slop gone 99% so just like a new one, very happy.
I then retrofitted my anti theft device for the transfer case so I can lock the transfer into neutral and remove the stick completely - took about 30 mins to do this, very effective anti theft action as the internal cab boot remains in place and nothing to grab onto - no more details, just a teaser - might do something commercially with this down the track.
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