Power from White Plug to Anderson Plug

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Originally Posted by Epic

Interesting read. I've decided that I'm going to replace the white plug with a 12 pin to tow a jayco camper and 'power' the fridge (with battery in the camper). With hopping between powered van sites, I think this will be the easiest solution.
When I get more serious with heading away from the powered sites, I will get a dual battery set up and an Anderson plug with associated wire upgrades.

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Why Modify the car? An adapter running from both plugs into 1 is very easy to make and will be more cost effective and neater.

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Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi Muddy and this may not be so easy to do but there is a FRIDGE circuit on the S12 plug ( PIN 6, RED wire ) and while it is set up to turn on and off with the ignition, it might be a simple job to convert this to a continual connection, like Pin 4, the Green wire.

If it is a straight forward job, you can then use both pins, in parallel to charge the battery.

Also, pin 2 use to be the charge circuit but I am not sure it even has a wire connected to it any more. If it does, this could be another option, either of which will save you having to run a complete new cable.

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We use this, but we do it via a DC/DC Charger but for one reason only, our fridge is a 3way fridge and the last thing you do is have a 3way running from the battery when stopped, hence why we have it setup to turn off when the ignition is off.

We have run this way for 10yrs and while the DC/DC Charger is not ideal for charging the camper battery, we suppliment the rest of the charge to the camper battery with a solar panel at camp, the fridge goes to gas and the only things running off the camper battery is the water pump and lights, it works for us at the moment.

Eventually we will take the DC/DC out, but we still want to have it set up in the same manner, only charging the battery when running, on all our trips the camper battery is fully charged at home before we leave, so we only need to keep it topped up while driving, we haven't really thought of getting a 12v fridge for the camper, if we did then we would need larger solar panels I guess, not going to get a generator:twisted:

Baz.

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Originally Posted by Scary

Make sure your deep cycle is charged then make and adapter up from the ign circuit pin in the above post to an anderson plug - this is what I do.

Drove x thousands of Km's and the draw is low and keeps the camper trailer batteries full while on the go.

Check the battery level on the way home before you leave though as I wouldn't hook it up with the batteries too low - wait till you have 240v and charge up again - it is only IMO a maintenance option for while you are travelling.

As it is on the ign circuit there is no chance of it draining your car battery and only using while the batteries in the camper are in a reasonable state of charge means the draw through the wiring will be low (about what the fridge pulls or less)

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Do you mean put a 12 pin in? i was going to leave my tow electrics as is and just get a rated cable run underneath from the isolator to the tow area with an anderson on the end..

Hi Zilch and not a good move.

If your D3 or D4 needs to have the cab lifted off the chassis, if you have not disconnected the cables, they are usually damaged and/or cut.

If you intend to run new cabling to the rear, run it through the inside of the cab.

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Originally Posted by zilch

Do you mean put a 12 pin in? i was going to leave my tow electrics as is and just get a rated cable run underneath from the isolator to the tow area with an anderson on the end..

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No I made an adapter from the 12S plug to Anderson plug.

Ignition feed only

Runs to the batteries then from Batteries to the fridge - hence it keeps the Batteries fully charged by drawing as required from the alternator.

My comment is to have the camper batteries in tip top state before setting off so the draw is quite low.

If you stay somewhere for a number of days check the state of the batteries before plugging it all back in as in my mind if the camper batteries is in a low state of charge they will most likely draw too much current for the ignition fed cable.

Hence I carry a battery charger and solar panels as part of the overall kit to try and keep the camper batteries as full as I can.

This is not ideal if you are looking at long term no mains power travelling but does work for the trip to a destination or in between/home if you have access to mains or solar.

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Originally Posted by Scary

If you stay somewhere for a number of days check the state of the batteries before plugging it all back in as in my mind if the camper batteries is in a low state of charge they will most likely draw too much current for the ignition fed cable.

Hence I carry a battery charger and solar panels as part of the overall kit to try and keep the camper batteries as full as I can.

This is not ideal if you are looking at long term no mains power travelling but does work for the trip to a destination or in between/home if you have access to mains or solar.

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Bought a charger to actually provide power to the Trailer batteries whilst at the powered sites, Battery world put an Anderson plug on for me, so when camped not a problem for the majority of nights, most i think we have is 2 nights without mains, i will see if the bro in law is taking a genie

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Originally Posted by zilch

Bought a charger to actually provide power to the Trailer batteries whilst at the powered sites, Battery world put an Anderson plug on for me, so when camped not a problem for the majority of nights, most i think we have is 2 nights without mains, i will see if the bro in law is taking a genie

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2 nights will be fine if you are only running lights and fridge (of course this depends on your batteries)

All I am really saying is be careful if you have run the batteries to almost dead as the draw to recharge may be too great for the standard wiring

Hi everyone, with respect to the wiring and use of the White 12S plug, after reading this thread a few times to sort out the options I am going as below, if there is anything wrong with my proposed solution from a technical perspective, I would appreciate any thoughts, but first a quick bit of back ground.



I have bought but not yet taken delivery of a new van, it has 2 on board 110Ah AGM batteries and solar panels. It also has Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and breakaway system.

The wiring diagram supplied by the caravan manufacturer asks for Battery charge (pin 8 of the 12 pin plug for the “+ve” and pin 10 for the “-ve”) and Brakesafe charge on pins 11 and 12 respectively. I have not yet been able to find out what current requirement for those two circuits but initially used the 12V 30A (permanent) circuit from the 12S for the van battery charge and the switched 12V 15A circuit to provide battery charge to the brakesafe unit.



The ESC requires 30A circuit, I have done this via a 50A Anderson plug, from the vehicle battery via a 30A self resetting circuit breaker.



After reading this thread I looked at the fuse actually fitted for the “Trailer connector – battery feed” and found as posted here that it was a 15A fuse.



Hence, my proposed solution is to parallel wire pins 12 and 10 into the rectangular 12 pin plug from the Anderson plug wiring direct from the battery and not use the battery feed from the 12S plug.
I would like to confirm the designation of wire size used to connect the Anderson plug. While methods used seem a bit confusing but if I measure the diameter of the twisted copper conductor I get 3.7mm, which is a conductor area of 10.75mm^2 which I think is described as 6B&S, while I know this is not the actual method it provides a method of identification. I will leave the wiring to pins 11 and 12 as previous.

Is there anything wrong from a technical perspective, and what circuit breaker would be most appropriate.

Thanks.

Hi Peter and first off, if your two 110Ah batteries have been discharged down to a low state while you were camping, when you start your days drive, those two batteries' can easily try to draw 35 to 40 amps EACH.

That’s a total current draw of 70+ amps.

So forget the S12 connections.

Next, you should run 6B&S twin ( 13.5mm2 x 2 ) from your cranking battery, via an isolator, to your van’s house batteries, with a 50 amp auto resetting circuit at each end of the positive cable, near each battery.

You do not need to run a dedicated high current power supply for the ESC as it only draws high current if a instability even occurs.

Here is a simple device for connecting your ESC’s power supply to the battery charging circuit.

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...016/10/256.jpg

Thanks for your feedback drivesafe, it is as I feared, the time spent on the weekend running the cables was wasted really, the cables are too small, though the current draw is a surprise, I guess it depends a bit on what the solar panels can contribute, on a rainy day……not much I guess, hence your comment. Yes the S12 was forgotten long ago, thanks for the circuit breaker suggestion. Good idea on the piggy back Anderson plug, amasing how obvious things are when someone has suggested a better way, I can do this on the van end (when I get it), it will be a bit neater I hope the wiring is up to the task. Not quite sure why the van manufacturer would provide a wiring diagram to wire the 12 pin plug to charge the batteries when it does not have the current handling capabilities. I guess I have a bit of rewiring to do at both ends.