hello my name is mel welcome to my world and for those of you that
are new to my channel i'm currently working on this volkswagen crafter
turning it into an off-grid stealthy camper van and today i'm going to be fitting a c-tec charge
controller this is a smart charge controller because this campervan has a smart alternator let's go
now according to the picture on the back of the box this is really simple to wire up
as you can see a really simple basic diagram and that's exactly why becky chose this because
it looked simple to wire up but unlike my ring dc to dc charge controller you need a separate
live feed for this which makes it a little bit complicated which is why becky's asked me to
step in and help out so let's have a look what we get in the box in the box we get
an instruction manual nice and glossy by the way unlike the ring dc to dc charge controller
their manual isn't anywhere near as posh as this and it's in a multitude of languages
so that's a marker quality for a start now the actual charge controller itself
it's really simple there's no fancy schmancy display panel it's simply a couple of little leds
making it really simple to use it does everything itself after all it is a smart charge controller
now the main difference with this one is we do have an extra couple of leads and these need to be
fed from the ignition um i think we'll tackle that first because that's probably where most people
have the biggest hang up all this stuff is pretty self-explanatory it's this part where
most people get a little bit nervous shall we say it's also got a heat sensor as well to
check the temperature of your batteries so all in all quite a nice little package
so i've decided to fit the charge controller in the battery box itself right next to the
battery so there's not that much length of cable coming from the charge controller to the battery
keeping our link our lengths of cable nice and short but the main cable coming from the engine
battery i've already fitted this in place this the other end of this cable is attached to our main
engine battery so this i need to connect to this which is really simple you've simply got a
terminal there that you connect it to the most difficult thing like i said earlier
is figuring out where these little fin wires go so that's what i'm going to do next
i'm actually going to read the instruction manual for this one
so after consulting this instruction manual i now know where these smaller wires have got to go and
they go in different configurations depending on your batteries they have two configurations
one for agm or lead acid batteries and one for lithium-ion batteries all i need to do is connect
the black wire to earth and the red this tiny little red cable needs to go to an
ignition feed so that's our next job is to find a live feed from the ignition to this little red
cable that's what i'm going to do next before i put this in place and connect all these cables up
i'm going to go up the front have a look in the fuse box and try and find a live feed
now connected to our main battery one wire connected to our ignition feed all i've got
to do now is mount this to the side bulkhead as you can see i've mounted it right there using four
screws our first connection is our main battery cable and that goes to the terminal marked a
now here's a strange thing nowhere in the instructions or any wiring diagram can i
find a fuse rating to run between the ignition to the control wire so uh that's a bit odd i'd like
to put a fuse in so i'm going to use a little five amp fuse to go between the little red wire
like this and this is a handy way to make your own fuse holder just simply use some spade connectors
like that there you go that is now fused it's only a little five amp fuse that's just because i can't
find any diagrams anywhere and i think it should have a fuse really so that's just a little safety
measure that i've put in place now the black and red wire is our negative feed so if this were
lithium batteries this black and red wire would go to a live terminal but because these are agm's
it's simply used as a negative so because it's a negative rather than make this wire longer
and run it down to our negative terminal i'm simply going to screw it to the negative
terminal on the actual unit itself and that's held in place using this screw
it's quite difficult to one-handed but i'm sure can manage and we're going to place that in there
like that now i'm not going to do this up just now because i need to run a thick negative cable
from the negative from the unit to the negative of that battery so i think i'll probably do that next
so i've just quickly knocked up this negative cable and i'm going to place that
like i say through there onto there and the nice thing about this unit is if i pull that down a
bit move the camera around you can actually see the negative terminal is quite clearly
marked on the other side the other end of this negative cable goes to our negative
on the battery i won't do it up just yet because i need to place another cable on there to connect
our other navigative up now to complete our neutral circuit i need to add this battery
monitor because this goes in our neutral it goes between the battery and our negative earthing
point on the vane so this is the main component of our battery monitor it's called a shunt and it
literally goes between the battery and the earth of the vehicle really simple little device really
i'm going to fit it and then i'll show you how it looks so i fixed the shunt to the back of the
battery box as you can see and the neutral cable simply goes to the shunt and across the shunt
to the other side of the neutral which then goes to our earthing point at the back of the vehicle
i'll show you where that is right now so the other end of that negative cable comes to the
main post here i've put a nice ground there i've drilled through made a hole removed all the paint
as you can see so it makes a nice negative contact this cable goes up to our monitor and you've got
one live cable which goes to our battery right there simple as that let's take a look at what
the monitor says so here is our battery monitor if i press this little button you'll be able to see
the state of our battery there's the charge and it is 12.94 now if you are interested in all the
specifications of all this sort of equipment i'm not going to run through it in the video
but i will put a link in the description in this video so where you can find all these components
and look at all the specifications for those of you that are interested
and now to finish off their circuit we're going to end on a positive note so our positive simply goes
to the outlet feed on the ctx and you can see that on the little symbol there behind that i don't
know if the camera can get round there or not you can see the little battery symbol so that means
that terminal goes to our battery between this terminal and the battery we need an inline fuse
just for safety's sake and this fuse is going to be a 30 amp fuse this is what they recommend
make sure that one's done up
simply goes on there and to bridge the gap between the batteries to complete our circuit
we need to put this on here like this
now i'm using locking washers which then these nuts and washers came with the batteries
they was in the kit so it's very nice of them to add these
i'll do these up tighter later on i'm just doing this for the purpose of the video so you can see
how the circuit works now we go from here with just a really quick recap this cable goes to
our main battery of the van so that's our main feed from the alternator and then our switched
live comes from this terminal goes into the first battery and then is bridged to the second battery
now the reason it goes into this first one and the opposite neutral goes to this one is so that the
circuit is even across the batteries so a positive goes into this battery and our negative comes
to this battery and they're bridged across each other we're using these which means the circuit
comes across ways of the battery so it takes equal draw an equal charge
now the heat sensor i'm simply going to slide underneath again
i'm going to slide that temperature sensor underneath our webbing
that's nice and tight under there and that will keep an eye on the temperature of our batteries
now if all that seems really complicated to you don't worry there is a simpler solution
it's a ring dc to dc charge controller and i made a video all about that charge controller and i'll
put a link to that video right there just for you thanks for watching for now currently working on
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