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 A couple of years ago I bought this '94 Toyota Spacia (mid 80's Toyota Van underneath) in excellent condition for too much money. I pulled the back seats out of it and didn't do much else until late last year when this started:                 Then I did this:              I made it from Perth, Western Australia to Hobart, Tasmania then blew out a lumbar disc again. I had a couple of vertebrae fused a month ago so it's keeping me out of that confined space. I'm not even allowed to drive until the neurosurgeon says so! Before I left home I got rid of almost all my possessions. After driving 4500km in two weeks I'm pretty sure I could throw away half of what I took with me. Living in such a small space wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, it just meant being anal about putting things in their places and planning ahead for normal, everyday tasks. If I was to do this again, I would choose a larger vehicle that is more box shaped. The curves and angles on this one make it difficult to fix things to the inside. Togaparty27 posted:Does anyone have a good solar setup that I could build. I'm thinking I will need around 200-300 watts. I spent ages figuring this part out. I ended up with a 200W 24v panel, a 15 amp MPPT charge controller, a 110Ah 12v AGM battery and a voltage sensing relay to connect the two batteries or not. When the sun is overhead, this system will put out 10 amps at 13.8 volts! My load was a couple of tiny LEDs, a 12" PC case fan, laptop charger, a pretty big stereo and a eutectic fridge. I put in a BMS as well. With all this my house battery never drops below about 90% charge so I should get heaps of cycles out of it. If I did it again I would probably go with a 50Ah LiPo instead of the lead acid. They're much lighter and smaller, even though the technology was a little immature when I built it. A Lone Girl Flier fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Apr 30, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 19:23
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 16:04 |
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It's fine if I keep my speed below 40km/h.
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May 3, 2015 03:33
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What was it used for before?
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Nov 15, 2015 01:30
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Zero VGS posted:- 2kw of flexible solar panels on roof (amazon), vacuum tube solar water heater (ebay) I love these plans and just wanted to comment on their feasibility.  Is there enough room for all of these on your roof? According to this, and assuming you're in the US and your panels will be mounted flat, you'll get about 5 hours of peak sun per day (annual average). In July it goes up to 7 or 8. Energy = power x time = 2000 x 5 = 10kwh Battery storage is around 90% efficient for a round trip, so you'd end up with 9kwh available at night. Putting that energy into the car's battery also has about the same losses, so you'd be able to put 8.1 kwh (for July ~13kwh) into the car per night, assuming ideal conditions and no other loads on the battery. A Nissan Leaf has a 24kwh battery. quote:For a fridge I think I'm going to build my own with just an airtight foam cooler, 12v peltier plate, and a fridge bimetal thermostat. It'd technically be less efficient than a compressor fridge, but being top-opening instead of front opening should make up for that. Have you had a look at eutectic fridges? Peltiers don't really get cold enough to safely store food and need to be cycling all the time. Eutectics store the cold in an ice jacket, so you can power it during the day while the sun's out and not touch your battery at night. Edit: Quick idea, if you're using solar hot water, I'm assuming it will be storage. Put the storage tank under the bed and you'll have an enormous hot water bottle 
A Lone Girl Flier fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jun 5, 2016 |
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Jun 5, 2016 01:04
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Zero VGS posted:I'll definitely be able to fit the 2kw by putting some of the flexible panels on side awnings. I can prop them up when the sun is out and fold them against the sides when traveling. This has the added bonus of being able to tilt the panels at an angle equal to your latitude, which should net you an extra ~2 hours of peak sun for those panels per day, if you can park east-west. (park jackknifed with the steering wheel on full lock and the trailer north-south and program the electric car to track the sun, moving the trailer to south-north throughout the day getting you ~20kwh for the average day lol) Jonny 290 posted:I think you're underestimating heating/cooling needs. This is the hot topic (ho ho). My experience is you have two options - perfect insulation and temperature control, or no insulation and extra blankets. If it's cold out, any part of the van that conducts heat from the interior to the exterior will cause moisture to condense inside the van and give you damp problems. This could be overcome with a dehumidifier (and refill your water tanks) or mitigated with materials selection and design. If you keep the temperature inside the same as outside through ventilation, you overcome the dampness problem and don't need a heat pump, but need to rug up when it's cold. I prefer the second option, because I can travel far lighter and insulating properly is quite difficult, but then I only carry about 1kwh in batteries and 200w of solar! A Lone Girl Flier fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Jun 5, 2016 |
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Jun 5, 2016 09:05
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Oct 20, 2016 02:51
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 16:04 |
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Aussie here. Check my posts in this thread I did a little write up a bunch of pages back. I don't know anything about heavy vehicles but those Hino ones seem really popular in Tassie.
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Oct 9, 2017 09:38
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