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Thought some before and after pictures would be appreciated.
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Keith's M1078A1 Project Overland
- Thread starter Keith Knight
- Start date
Thought some before and after pictures would be appreciated.
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So it’s been way to long for an up date, sorry about that other things tend to come first.
The shower and wet bathroom. That’s a small/tiny sink on the right. The sink will get a granite top then the faucet. The small handle is for a hand towel. Also we will be putting granite on top of the stainless toilet cover/lid.
The shower and wet bathroom. That’s a small/tiny sink on the right. The sink will get a granite top then the faucet. The small handle is for a hand towel. Also we will be putting granite on top of the stainless toilet cover/lid.
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I like that a lot. Did you custom build that? I'm looking for options for a tiny bathroom for my project, only I lack much in the way of actual carpentry skills. Hoping to find something easy to customize or that I can just drop right in.
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Thanks, yes I custom made it.
ramdough
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looks awesome as usual!
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Next is to start pulling wires.
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Espar heater/furnace installation.
Through hull glycol pass through.
rain shield covering the Espar furnace.
The water heat exchanger and the space heater both using the heated glycol as the heat source.
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This where I ran all of the electrical through the hull using Deutsch connectors. I made all the water and electrical connections to the habitat with connections that could quickly disconnect in order to remove the habitat from the frame if I need to service something. Basically I could have everything disconnected and ready to lift the habitat in about an hours time.
After the rain shield installed.
Fabricating the control panel and fitting the components.
The start of pulling wires. 
More, more, and lots more wire. I decided to use all marine grade tin coated copper wire for everything. As you can start to see I chose Victron for all of the electronics, solar charge controllers, inverter and batteries. Each individual blue components are blue tooth which makes set up and updates very easy. It’s really cool when I open the Victron app and I can see all the components and how they are performing such as each cell in every battery, if they are balanced and so on.
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Starting to terminate wires.
If you were wondering the various components are.
5,000 watt inverter
Smart battery management system / BMS
3ea lynx distributors
4ea solar charge controllers
2ea 30 amp DC to DC chargers for charging the house batteries while driving.
1ea 18amp DC / DC charger for charger the truck batteries
8ea 200amp hr Lithium batteries
8ea 325 watt solar panels
Testing the system with one batteries connected. 
Fabricating the seat frame and battery hold down. 
Finished all the electrical work. Used sliver plated copper buss bars on the batteries.
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Awesome work!
Third From Texas
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Looks amazing. I'm dreading electrical...
Third From Texas
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Excuse my ignorance, but what are these units? I recognize all the rest.
gslader
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Really impressive work. So clean and such great attention to detail.
ramdough
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Those are linx distributors. Or something like that. They are on the victron site.
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It’s all part of the lynx distribution system. It’s a new device only about a year old. The smaller one is the lynx smart BMS / battery management system and the other ones are basically buss bars and fuses. It’s a really cool system everything communicates with the BMS and the BMS is everything packaged into a neat unit. It’s a shunt, a disconnect, and so much more.
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Now to put the solar panels on the roof and power them up.
This is the frame on the drivers side that will hold two solar panels. There will be a frame on the passenger side as well. These frames will hold two solar panels, each panel measures 65.5” x 39.4” x 1.6”. Each frame has 4ea 36” 250 lb drawer slides.
The panels on the frames slide under the four panels mounted on top. They are powered by two 36” x 1.5” pneumatic actuators.
Testing the slides before mounting the panels.
The two bottom panels installed on the drivers side.
You can see the actuators here.
the control valve all plumbed in.
Wire management is very challenging. My beautiful wife in the back ground is my right hand man, I couldn’t do this build without all of her help.
Now for the top panels.
This is the frame on the drivers side that will hold two solar panels. There will be a frame on the passenger side as well. These frames will hold two solar panels, each panel measures 65.5” x 39.4” x 1.6”. Each frame has 4ea 36” 250 lb drawer slides.
The panels on the frames slide under the four panels mounted on top. They are powered by two 36” x 1.5” pneumatic actuators.
Testing the slides before mounting the panels. The two bottom panels installed on the drivers side.
You can see the actuators here.
the control valve all plumbed in.
Wire management is very challenging. My beautiful wife in the back ground is my right hand man, I couldn’t do this build without all of her help.Now for the top panels.
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Out of the shop and everything running smoothly. Each panel has a peak rated power of 325 watts for a total potential 2,600 watts. But reality is you only get about 80% of the rated power so the most I’ve seen them produce is 2,100 watts.
This is a screenshot of the Victron Cerbo GX that is connected to the internet allowing me to monitor everything remotely. This is showing the last two days with the air conditioner set at 73 degrees here in hot Florida. I actually got everything up and running back in July and during our hottest summer it ran the air conditioner 24-7 and kept everything charged up. 
the kitchen cabinets framed up.
Fridge and wardrobe cabinets frames out.
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just fabricated all the aluminum drawers now to attach glides and test fit.
This drawer uses 300lb drawer glides that lock in and out which doubles as a step to get into the bed. 
The lid flips up for accessing whatever. 
Just finished cutting all of the drawer and cabinet faces out of outdoor waterproof MDF Board.
Next, pull everything back out and cut latch hole, router the edges, sand, seal and paint.Attachments
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Wow! Amazing handy work...
Have you used mdf before in an outdoor setting ? Im curious if you can make it completely moisture resistant ? I had asked my buddy that owns a custom cabinet shop about mdf when i did my truck but he steered me away from it and said he had tried to use it in some builds but it seemed to always warp after time and you couldnt use any water based urethanes or primers to try to seal it unless you were covering it with a formica type covering or wilsonart which have some new laminates that are great looking including all types of metal finishes and you may have already seen this stuff just throwing it out there ! The more the ideas the better it gets ! Great looking job !