Weekly Project #3 (Part One): Rewire the Beaver.

For this week's project I'm going to begin rewiring the Beaver! The Beaver is my 1973 Dodge RV. It is my mobile hovel away from the hovel. I have never done anything like this before and I'm looking forward to whacking on this thing.

The wiring is old and needs an upgrade.  I'm going to do this in two parts because I will be removing some major appliances I can't use, which will require renovations I can better do when it's warmer, i.e. springtime. That will be the second part of the rewire. First I'm going to take a good look at what is there and make a plan including drawing up a wiring diagram. I have already ordered most of the parts I think I'll need, and I bought a couple of 12 volt books that I've been perusing.

Monday:
I spent some time looking around at the main parts of the wiring system trying to understand what was going on. I thought about relocating the house battery to a different place.  I did some more reading in the 12 volt book. Then I took a whack at a wiring diagram:

First shot at a wiring diagram

Tuesday:
Problems. After going online to an RV forum I realized I can't relocate the battery without other problems (like poisonous gas and explosions). I took more things apart and crawled underneath the Beaver to trace wires. I also received the new converter/charger and I'm trying to figure out how it will fit into the system.  Things are getting more complicated and I'm a little worried about having enough time to do what I wanted this week, especially since it's Winter and cold!

Wednesday:
Came up with a plan after looking closer at everything. It will require more work than I thought including some carpentry and three battery switches and running much thicker gauge wire from the battery bay to the power center on the other side of the coach. I wired up the USB socket panel and tested it with a 9 volt battery. Looks like it works!

Battery bay will contain 2 batteries 

New electrical components 

Wired up socket panel

Thursday:
I refined the design and got out my saw to do some carpentry. I built a plywood partition in the battery bay to separate the batteries from the charger. A spark from the charger could ignite battery gases so they should be in different compartments. I'm also going to mount one or two of the switches on the partition.

Friday:
I have three batteries I want to accommodate in the Beaver (it came with one). One of them is the chassis or starting battery. The other two are house batteries meaning they are used for 12 volt lights and appliances in the coach. Normally the two house batteries would be wired together in parallel but that requires they be of the same type, age and model. Mine are are not the same so I am going to wire them so that I can use them separately with a switch. When one is low I can just switch over to the other. The same thing works in charging -- one at a time. On top of that there is an existing wire running from the alternator to the battery bay allowing the house battery to be charged by the alternator when the motor is running. The problem is that with new battery types, this is no longer a good thing without some more hardware to manage the charging process. I don't want to add that hardware, but I am going to keep that wire in place and put a manual switch on it, which complicates things a bit.  So I have three batteries and three manual switches to wire up. I think it should look like this:

Saturday:
I bought some more electrical components (wire) online after looking at my diagrams, then went to several local hardware stores for smaller hardware. I think I have everything now I need but am out of time. Weather has been a factor. It's been too cold to get the work done that was needed. Or, I'm just a wimp. Also, I've never done anything like this so I've been moving slowly trying to figure what I need to do to get to where I want. I don't know how much I can get done tomorrow but either way it's a good start.