As promised a few months ago, when I finished my LED conversion on the 9 I would send a picture. I have also included my latest project and that is the electrical distribution center. Let me know your thoughts. I am particularly happy with the 6 month polish job including the original MCI side mirrors.
Thanks
Grant
front drivers turn signal LED in original housing.
Rear LEDs with polished original housings! Major pain in the butt! >:(
Grant
Electrical main distribution panel in bay. This is a work in progress with my electrician. He is trying to set the system up for easy repair and maintenance. He wants it to be similar to a house. The panel is isolated with rubber pads. The inverter will sit in front of the panel on a slide out tray. The battery box is set for the middle bay.
Thoughts?
Grant, That rocks! Very nice work, congratulations!
Nice work, very neat and clean, you will really appreciate that when you finally get out on the road with your coach. I see your main panel, but what are the two sub panels for to the left of the main one? Also, how do you paln to plug into shore power?
Dave Siegel 1948 Silversides
Naples, Florida
Very nice. Love the shine! The LEDs look good to. How are they working out in the daylight?
One note... before you get too far on wiring, you should try using the bus on a typical trip and try accessing the breakers as you would normally to turn on or off things like air conditioners or heater elements, etc. With your breaker panel set in the center of the bay as it is, you may find that it's more inconvenient than you thought. I'm speaking from experience. I mounted mine in the center of the front bay, in front of the aux tank. After using it for a year, I have plans to move it up inside the coach for easier access. I find that I need to get to it WAY more than I ever anticipated and once the bay is filled with camping gear, tools, and such, it's a real pain in the butt to get to.
Just a suggestion.
craig
Thanks for the nice comments :D Here is my thoughts on the panel. This panel will act as the main distribution panel to both the 12 volt components and the 110 units. It is primarily filled with breakers, emergency shut off bars and redundancy for safety. Inside the bus is another nice looking interior panel that has all the secondary breakers and switches for all the components. This panel has the genset guages, meters........I will only have to access these bay panels if something is amiss. Like the home, each 110 outlet will either feed to a switch, or not, depending on the location and purpose.
The entire system will connect to the shore power using an automatic cord reel that will be installed near the panel. The inverter will sit close to the same panel as well. The two subpanels are for current and future growth (open breakers). One sub panel is designed for components that are supplied power exclusively by the inverter. I was trying to get most major components on their own breaker and each sub panel holds only 6 to 8 breakers.
At least this looked good on paper and made sense to several people. It may seem like overkill but I didn't want to get into a situation later on were I was trying to piggy back onto something not able to handle the load.
thanks again for the comments.
Grant- LED's look great! I also changed my two 7" reds over, and they are very bright.
Comment on the electricals. Granted it is a nice system, but I too have all my electricals inside the bus (had little choice with a transit) and I'm very glad they are. I am accessing the boxes several times a day, whether to turn the water heaters on and off (I know I could have a sub switch, but why? They haven't worn out in 12 years yet), switch from land to gen line, access inverter (like to see how warm it gets), etc. Plus with my gen in the very front, I wanted the electricals as near as possible. You could accomplish the same conveniences of inside boxes by just making one of your walls out of 2x4's to accomodate all the boxes you have in the bay. Then you'd have only one electrical center for simplicity. With the breakers in the bay, I hope they are magnetic trip breakers, since the bays will be hot in summertime (unless you cool them) and with thermal breakers could be tripping prematurely. Just some thoughts-I believe it is always the best to keep it simple-but you'll do it your way. Good Luck, TomC
Can you tell us again where you got the LED's? I seem to have lost the link. Thanks
PS...Looks super BTW...
Go ahead and and run extra wires for future use too! ;)
Nice Bus!!
I got the 4 inch units from http://www.americansuperlite.com/index.cfm
The seven inch units from:http://www.etruckpart.com/index.htm
Good luck!
At my last Bluebird rally someone made the Bluebird Logo using leds from this website http://tinyurl.com/dmak8j
To shrink long url to small ones as did on this one got to tinurl.com
Good looking panel. Only comment would be to make sure your electrician is familiar with RV code.
Grant, I love the shine. Very sharp. Tom Y
Grant, Sorry I missed it when you first posted back in July but why is your distribution panel isolated with rubber pads? All of the panel cases should be securely bonded to the bus frame.
Len
Grant, great job on the mirror finish. What did you use to get your panels to look that way. I was told that the original panels can never get to the mirror finish look.