hey guys welcome to another episode of roam overlanding today i'm actually going to be
covering some exciting changes that i've been working on on the vehicle it's been a lot of
effort good couple weeks and basically in the previous episode i explained to you the changes
i've made to the turbo to the tires to the rear seats and the storage system in the back there now
this week we're going to be looking at the changes that i've been working on in the canopy itself
we're looking at a new draw system we're looking at a new battery system and i've got a new air
compressor in the vehicle and we've tweaked quite a bit it's very exciting and i can't wait to share
with you guys so let's start with the battery system this has been the bulk of the work that's
kind of gone into everything we are now running the redarc red vision system with a manager 30
we've got some custom outlets we've got the whole red vision system wired up and everything water
tank levels we've got all our switching for our lights and stuff like that i can show you here pop
there we got the lights on and off we've got our 12 volts on and off we've got usbs and all sorts
of things here high output usb cigarette lighter some more usb slots we've got the water pump
hooked up there i can power the water pump from the red vision system and everything and yeah it's
really really cool i've been playing around with it for the past couple weeks and i'm very very
impressed so far basically what we've got here is we've got the red vision system which is the tvms
total vehicle management system this thing manages the auxiliary battery the charger up to you know
five thirty amp loads five 10 amp loads you've got your rbus connectors for communicating with the
manager 30 and the monitor and the bus bar you've got digital inputs and control so you can control
you know switching and stuff like that from reverse lights or pressure sensors or light
sensors or whatever you've got your six water tank sensors you've got two temperature sensors
and an inverter remote control so it's a lot the red vision system really packs a lot of
power the tvms feeds into the little red vision display here and this gives us a look at our
water tank levels our battery levels the input and output of battery of you know power consumption
which so i can see the amount of amperage coming from the battery system i can see what's coming
from my solar system i can see what's coming from ac power i can see what's going out when i switch
on my lights i can see that it uses like one amp if i switch on the fridge i can see it uses like
five amps so you can see your power consumption and it can actually estimate how long your system
can run at that current power consumption how long will it take to charge at that current charge rate
you can really monitor are you positive or negative on your system if you're charging
via solar is the battery draining or you're actually putting power back into your battery
another one of the advantages of the red vision system is that basically anything you do on this
red vision and you any of the information you see on there you actually can see on your phone as
well so like now for example i run my phone with the red vision app in the front of the vehicle
you can also do all of your switching from the phone so that means i can leave all my my camp
lights on if i set up a dummy light or something that's far away from the cam to draw the bugs away
i can climb up in my rooftop tent and then i can switch everything off from my phone in the
rooftop tent i can manage the fridge i can make sure that that's on i've actually have the fridge
locked on so you can't switch it on and off by mistake i've put in a new lithium battery so
that's 120 amp hour lithium battery now so that just works wonderfully with this setup
so with charging and all that stuff we've got the manager 30 is in control of that so basically what
the manager 30 does is it is a 30 amp dc charger it's got an mppt and you can also charge via ac
so i've added a ac caravan outlet here that i can plug in at a campsite and i can charge up
my battery system at 30 amps you can charge your solar system at 30 amps you can charge from the
vehicle battery at 30 amps so hence manager 30. so yes it's big and if you compare it
to other types of dc chargers it's quite a lot bigger but this is actually three units in one
and it's very very impressive so we've got our solar outlets here that's a tower when i need to
plug in one of the other things we've got is we've actually got the redarc 160 watt solar blanket
so i'll show you that now but basically that will plug in here and we've got an amazing setup
so you know it's been a fun installation i got to work on it with my dad he was an aeronautical
technician for 26 years so he knows his stuff when it comes to wiring and stuff so he helped me with
a lot of the stuff he helped me with cutting the board i then went to bush tech they helped me with
carpeting the board it was a really fun project to work on and i must say the redox stuff it
seemed daunting in the beginning but the way it's designed and the way it's actually put together is
very very simple it's amazing to see what you can do this basically comes with a sticker pack for
like labeling all your things and there's stuff on there that you would never think you could put
through something like this so it's really your imagination is the limit when it comes to the
red vision system and how you want to play with it and tweak it it's a lot of fun and i'm very
happy to have redock on board for you know the seasons going forward it's an amazing partnership
and they're an incredible company to work with and their products are just in a league
of their own so yeah if you guys are keen on checking out the redox system i highly recommend
going and checking out the youtube channel and their website they've got loads of little videos
showing the installations explaining the products in technical detail and things like that i use all
of those videos as my reference point for planning my own diy installation on it and locally if
you're looking at getting redarc products in south africa you can head to your nearest 4x4 mega world
or get in touch with them on instagram or through their website and they can help you out with
setting you up with a redox system we've done a lot more on this build so let me swing around here
and show you what's been going on as you can see
packed and pretty much ready to go we are leaving on a trip tomorrow i'll tell you more about that
a little bit later but we have the new updated bushtech draw system now this is a big upgrade
in comparison to the previous one i've been running that draw system now for almost two years
it's done a lot of hard work for me and i've abused it and it's withstood everything but
the challenge bushtech set themselves for this next iteration of the draw system was to be as
light as possible but as strong as necessary for an overland lifestyle that other draw system i can
slam and slam and that thing will never break but it was very heavy it was over 90 kilograms
i think 98.5 is about what we weighed this new draw system with the same configuration as the
other draw system comes in at 71. so we are almost 30 kilos lighter than the other draw system but
we've got more functionality out of it now so say for example we open up here the other draw system
didn't lock out so you were still fighting gravity now you see these nice new little
red latches here push up push in beautiful same on the fridge side pull it out locks out
it's fantastic so that's really awesome they also have a new fridge mounting
system so you can see here there's no longer i had a little red cord here this
i'm going to pick up the whole drawer with this thing they've got a new system that actually drops
into the drawer that you can secure specifically i think at the moment the national lunar fridge
is on that is super cool they've also got a cutout here for the front-facing screen
on the fridge so i can just open up and i can see what my fridge is at i can program it from here
it's just all these really nice additions it's really really nice i've even gone as far as
improving the fridge cage there's now honeycomb on the inside of the fridge cage there's tie-down
points all around the fridge cage so that's going to give you better ventilation but at
the same time you're going to be able to secure stuff so now i've got my water can secured i've
got my little webber secured there very impressed so far very happy to get out
there and really abuse it for now that's really awesome i'm excited to have that all sorted out
i want to show you one more little thing that we've worked on and on the other side
of the canopy so let me shift the cameras around quick and let me show you that so on this side
some of the changes i've made is well this entire cupboard has been changed i have got thanks to 4x4
megaworld this beautiful little high output air compressor i got to see this thing in action in
namibia on roelfie's vehicle and this little thing outperformed my massive cheapy air compressor
like flawlessly every time i mean you've got your pressure switches
like if i switch it on the second it gets to you know it can cut off on its own
things like that if it gets to pressure when you got it so you don't have to run around and keep
switching off the air compressor so it doesn't blow up you know what i mean you can go and you
can you know easily move around the vehicle whereas before i was constantly like running
forwards and backwards and forwards and backwards from the air compressor to my indeflate while i'm
pumping up my tires it also takes up significantly less space it's far more power efficient and it is
just one of those things that i think this is something i've been looking forward to doing
for a while and what that allowed us to do now is we can put in the shelf we've got our gloves we've
got our snatch strap we've got our hose we've got a little you know little dust pan we've got the
inflate in here i've got my torque wrench in here and i've got a traffic triangle so i've really
managed to utilize the space i won't lie i took a lot of inspiration from darren at bushtech with
how he's got his cupboard set up and roofie with how he set his cupboard up as well so i must say
very cool very excited about that change now last time we chatted about the hilux i showed you the
storage system inside the back of the vehicle but it's done now so let me show you that and
there is one last very very cool thing inside the cab of the vehicle that i got just yesterday
and this is cutting edge stuff so i can't wait to share that with you
there it is all powder coated carpeted and pretty much done i've got a little box in there that's
been velcroed down to the carpet underneath and the jackery's found its home there i've got a plug
here so that whole inverter system and everything is there it's charging from the vehicle when we're
driving or it's charging from the redox system when we're at camp and i've got all my plugs and
stuff that i need there so that's really nice when it comes to you know working on my laptop i'm busy
you know downloading the footage and stuff from a day of filming or charging the camera batteries
this is a dedicated space in the vehicle to be able to work on my stuff so that i'm very very
very happy with i've used it now already a couple of times and it has been great so i'm really glad
that's all sorted now things are going to slowly fund their homes and all that stuff but i've saved
something fun for last
it is this beautiful creature this is the garmin tread xl overland edition it is
ginormous it is a 10 inch screen i've only just put it in the vehicle i'm still going through
it i'm still seeing you know what all is actually going on on here but i must say if it is anything
like the combination like i think it is it's got inreach built in so you've got your satellite
communication actually built into it as well so you don't need to carry another dongle it's pretty
incredible i've got my apps on here and the maps are very very cool i've gone ahead and i've put
the tracks for africa maps on here as well and oh the it's just the combination is just absolutely
amazing so i must say i am absolutely thrilled at the moment it is it is big though that's gonna be
something to get used to but so easy on the eyes the brightness is amazing the just the build
quality is fantastic they really know how to make good products i'm very keen to kind of get a bit
of experience on it use it see how it works does it kind of you know does it surpass the overlander
the overlander was the benchmark for me and i'm kind of keen to see how this one performs but i
feel very positively about it but i'm very stoked to kind of play around with that and see that now
on the next trip which we leave tomorrow and it is quite an exciting trip at that so
let me tell you a little bit more about that and let me show you
the vehicle that we're going to be taking with us on that trip
obviously we're pretty much all packed up there's a few last little things to do but we are going
to be heading out on a really epic epic trip we're going to be teaming up with bush tech
they have built an epic 79 series land cruiser v8 diesel with a tray set up on it lifted suspension
bumpers everything it is a beautiful touring rig and we're going to be taking that rig
to the baviaans cliff we're going to be trying to find as many bush camps as we can in the baviaans
cliff and we're going to put it to the test and see how does a tray set up compare to our style so
let's say for the sake of it for fun aussie style versus south african style
now most vehicles you're gonna see over landing around southern africa are gonna have a canopy
an awning and a rooftop tent just like this have a little drawer system inside
trays are not that popular here but it is a trend that is picking up and i think the influence of
overlanding and four-wheel driving in australia is really starting to impact the local south african
market so a lot of local companies are kind of coming up and starting to develop trays now i've
worked closely with bushtech for a long time so it'd be very interesting to see what they've been
working on what they've been developing and see is this something that the south african market
wants is there something that the south african market needs and is it actually better than
running a really high-end setup like mine so it's going to be really fun to see i've never driven
a land cruiser before i've obviously never used the tray before i've only seen a tray a few times
so it's going to be a really fun experiment to see how do we pack it what do you do with the space
what do you do with all the little cupboards and the drawers and all of the things on it so
roelfie's going to be coming through with the land cruiser soon we're going to be having a look at it
and you know maybe we pop through to tech they can run us through how the land crews are set up
talk us through the tray some of the functionality and stuff of it so we can wrap our minds around it
pack the vehicles and head out for an amazing adventure and really put it to the test so i
hope you guys are going to subscribe and you know comment down below let me know what you think of
some of the changes what do you think of the redox system the draw system the little air compressor
um the garmin holy cow that thing is cool so yeah let me let me know what you think in the comments
down below make sure to subscribe to stay tuned to see the upcoming trip we've got some big things
planned after the baviaans kloof trip we're going to continue on for another 30 days over landing to
some of south africa's top destinations so this is a series you guys do not want to miss out on
there's some really fun stuff coming up over the next good couple of months so hope to see you all
out on the next adventure and i'll catch you then cheers