G'day guys today i'm going to show you how easy it is to install a really high quality dual battery
system into your vehicle with the Adventure King's Mark ii dc dc charger now with lithium
charging capability now every setup is going to be different but here's a bit of a basic idea
of the tools and components you'll need to get this install done the first thing you're going
to need is your dc-dc charger then in order to run power from your starter battery back to the unit
you're going to need some heavy duty cable now you can buy a wiring kit that makes this whole job a
lot easier because the wires are pre-terminated and there's a fuse and fuse holder built in
or you can go out and just buy some bare cable the other thing you'll need is some lighter duty cable
for your ignition wiring plus you'll need some heat shrink some terminals some fuses and fuse
holders to connect the whole system up to mount everything down you're going to need some nuts
bolts and washers plus some cable tires to run the cable neatly of course you're going to need your
second battery this dc-dc charger is compatible with lithium agm calcium batteries and flooded
lead acid depending on your setup will depend on what tools you require we're just using some
basic sockets and spanners some allen keys plus we've got some 12 volt tools some wire cutters
and crimpers plus we've got a test light depending on how you're mounting everything you might need a
drill and we're actually going to use an adventure king's 12 volt control box which makes this whole
setup a lot easier to install now the first thing i'm going to do for this setup is actually install
the dc-dc charger onto the 12-volt control box and hook it up to the terminals inside
now that's really easy because all these wires are colour-coded now this first wire is your
temperature sensor that actually goes to the earth terminal of your battery if it doesn't reach your
battery don't cut it it's really important to the unit and it actually won't function if this
has been cut so if it's not going to reach your battery roll it up and put it aside this small
grey wire needs to be connected to positive power if you're running a lithium the orange wire is for
AGM batteries the yellow wire is for flooded lead acid and the white wire is for calcium batteries
the small blue wire is your ignition sense wire so that's needed if you have a smart alternator or
you just want to get the most out of your unit if you have the 25 amp model with the built-in solar
regulator your green wire is your solar input the black wire is your common earth for the unit
the red wire will come from your starter battery and the brown wire will send power to your second
battery now if you're mounting this directly into your vehicle as is it'd just be a matter
of connecting the red wire for example directly to your power lead that goes to your starter battery
i'm going to install it onto the 12 volt control box which gives us all these power options
and we've got terminals inside which make it a lot easier the steps are pretty much the same so
follow along these are pre-wired inside and they've been set up and designed for a dc-dc
charger use a three millimetre allen key to unscrew the lid now inside this 12-volt control
box you've got these three terminals which make it so easy to install your dc-dc charger connecting
your black wire up to this one your red wire up to this one and your brown wire up to this one means
you can connect your two batteries on separate terminals and you're pretty much ready to go
we've designed an empty space here so the dc dc charger fits on and there's a grommet so you can
run all your wiring to the inside of the box now you're going to need to add an eye terminal to the
end of this so it'll fit onto those terminals and depending on where you mount this charger
you'll need to extend the wiring as well i'm using a hydraulic crimping tool with correctly
sized jaws and crimp terminals to ensure a quality connection you can pick these tools up from around
50 bucks then make sure you add heat shrink to protect the joint and prevent short circuits
so i've extended out that earth cable by using a crimp here to join the two wires
and then a crimp with an m10i terminal at the end and it's got plenty of length now
i'll do the same thing now for the red wire and the brown wire
now i've extended those three wires and added eye terminals on the end so it'll really easily
connect up inside the 12 volt control box the next thing i'm going to do is extend this green
wire out the reason you do that is because inside the control box you can really easily connect this
up to one of the quick connect plugs on the front which makes it super simple to plug your solar in
right so i've extended that green wire out and that's the solar input wire and instead
of using an eye terminal on this one i'm going to use a spade terminal and i'll show you why
once we get it in the box now that i've extended all those thicker wires it's time to mount the dc
dc charger to the front of the 12 volt control box now if you do need to open up this hole to
fit all your wiring in a great tip is to remove the grommet that's fitted and grab one from the
side of the 12 volt control box that you're not going to need as they're a lot bigger then you
use a step drill and just drill that out clean up any mess or swarf before you move on once you've
sorted out your grommet it's time to position your dc-dc charger feed all the wiring in to ensure
that it's going to reach those terminals then you can mark it up and drill the mounting holes
so once it's through you just need to check that all your wiring is going to reach those terminals
so we've got our negative here our starter battery here we've got our auxiliary or second battery
terminal here perfect and our solar input will check that it fits up onto this quick connect plug
perfect right so now that we know they fit it's just a matter of marking up where we want to
drill these holes now i'm just going to pull the wiring back out so i can easily drill those holes
i've just grabbed these little nuts and bolts and that's what i'm going to use to
mount down through the top of the control box so i've grabbed the right size drill bit i'm
going to drill these four holes out again make sure you clean up any mess or swarf
with those four holes drilled it's just a matter of feeding your wires back through the grommet and
then mounting your dc dc charger to the face of the control box once that dc dc charger is
tightly mounted you can work on the wiring so we've got our brown wire our red wire our black
wire and our green solar wire first up we'll take the brown wire and connect it to this terminal
next grab your red wire and connect it to this empty terminal here
your black wire will connect up to this earth terminal
and your green solar wire will connect up to this quick connect plug using the spade
terminal now i'm going to add a piece of heat shrink on here to hold them together
now just to reiterate our brown wire has gone to this terminal
our red wire has gone to this terminal and our black wire has gone to this terminal and
i've just put them on top and finger tighten them because we're going to have to add extra wiring to
all three of these and that's the point when we'll put the washer and the nut in the correct position
as for this solar wire we've connected it up to this quick connect plug which leaves us with
this tail end now we're not going to let that go to waste because you have to connect up one of
these wires depending on your battery type you can actually use this as the input now in this
vehicle we're using an AGM so we're going to need to connect up this orange wire if you're using
lithium you'd connect up the grey wire i'm going to cut this cable tie connect this to the orange
and then cable tie it back up so this is the same process as before take your time crimp everything
together and use heat shrink to protect it while i'm at it i'm going to go ahead and clean up the
rest of the wiring plus i'm going to terminate the white grey and yellow wires as they're not
needed for this install so we just need to keep them protected now the last thing you're left
with is this blue wire and that's your ignition wire for if you have a smart alternator or an
eco type alternator or if you just want to get the most out of your dc dc charger with the correct
charging pattern now you'll need to extend this blue wire out to reach a 12 volt ignition source
that's power when your vehicle's on some dual cabs and wagons might have a 12 volt outlet in the back
of the vehicle that's only on when your vehicle is on and that's perfect you can hook into that
otherwise you might have to find something in the fuse box in the vehicle or something behind
the dash so make sure you grab enough cable for your use plus you'll need a small fuse as well
now in my d-max i'm going to run this blue wire from the fuse box under the bonnet so to make it
easier i'm going to run it along with my main power cables that are coming from my starter
battery so i'm still needing to connect this up to this blue wire we're going to do it once this
12 volt control box and dc charger are actually installed in the vehicle we'll come back to this
now the fun part actually mounting the 12 volt control box again this is going to be different
for every setup but i'm going to sit this one about here the first thing i'm going to do is mark
it out drill those holes now i've made this little 12-volt enclosure that i'm going to mount the box
to and i know that there's nothing on the backside i need to worry about so i can drill straight
through and mount to that so that makes it really easy i'm just going to pick four spots on the
inside of this 12-volt control box mark them and drill them and then use this as the template to
mark out my holes and drill through here that way the holes will line up first go that's super easy
now that the dc-dc charger and 12-volt control box are solidly mounted in your vehicle you're
going to have to finish running all the power cables that means running power from
your starter battery and then power to your deep cycle battery now because my deep cycle battery is
underneath here and my control box is right here it's easier for me to run that one first
so i'm just going to roughly measure up how much of this cable i need to reach from those terminals
through the control box underneath here and through to the deep cycle battery
so that's about right i've added just a little bit of extra length so i'd not
caught short now we're going to cut this and add some terminals now to make the wiring that's going
to run from your second battery through to your 12 volt control box and dc dc charger is super simple
what you're going to need is some heat shrink and eye terminals for both ends
in this case i'm using m10s on this end as that's what's inside the control box and on this end i'm
using m8 as it's an adventure kings AGM deep cycle battery and that's what size the threads
are on top so it's super easy over here with my fuse and fuse holder i'm using m6s as they'll
fit directly on those threads then it's just a matter of connecting it all up and fitting it in
again make sure your wires are properly crimped with heat shrink to protect the joints and circuit
alright we're done now notice i've left that 50 amp fuse out of the fuse holder because while
we're installing it into the vehicle we don't want it to be live let's get into it i've cut this hole
here so i'm going to feed the two wires with the m10 terminals up through the bottom of this
control box and connect them up to the earth for the black wire and the second post here
that's connected up to the brown wire on the dc charger and connect it up to the 12 volt control
box itself after that i'm just going to run this temperature sensor wire down through the grommet
in the control box through this hole and over to the negative terminal of the battery as well
now that we've finished wiring up the auxiliary battery in the back of the vehicle it's time to
think about the starter battery and how we're going to connect that to our dc-dc charger so
we do need to run our ignition wiring so we've got it here plus we're going to need to run
our main power cables whether you're using a pre-made kit or you've made your own by adding
terminals and a fuse like we've done before the first thing you need to do is disconnect your
earth or black terminal from your battery so nothing's connected while you're working
whichever of these two wiring options you're going with make sure you also pull the fuse
out of these as well so there's no chance anything will arc out while you're working then it's just
a matter of connecting the positive and negative terminals to the battery red to red black to black
i've connected up the positive and negative main power leads to the terminals on the battery but i
haven't actually connected the earth terminal to the battery yet so it's still not live now
the next thing we need to do is actually connect the ignition wire which is really important even
if you have an older vehicle that doesn't have a smart alternator because it ensures that the dc-dc
charger is always charging so long as your vehicle is running you don't have to worry about voltages
so the way i'm going to do this is actually tap it into a fuse in the fuse box which is i think
the easiest way to connect these up now the idea is that you'll find a circuit that has power while
the vehicle is running or while the ignition is on that way when you turn your vehicle off
your dc-dc charger disconnects and isolates your two batteries super easy way to do that is with
a test light connect the negative and then use the positive probe to check some of the fuses
to see one that's live while the vehicle is on and doesn't have power while the vehicle's off
now that i've found a fuse that has power when the vehicle is running or the ignition's on
and doesn't have power when the vehicle is off i can use one of these handy little double
adapters to actually plug in and then connect up my ignition wire this works by allowing the
original circuit in the fuse box to retain its original fuse and continue working as per usual
but you can add a second little circuit on here which basically draws no power and allows the
dc-dc charger to run much more effectively now make sure you put heat shrink on this joint to
keep it neat and tidy and protected and of course you don't need to use one of these double adapters
into your fuse box you could find an ignition source behind the dash or as i said earlier in the
rear of your vehicle if that makes it easier but this way is pretty simple so i'm going to pull out
this existing fuse that i've already identified i'm going to plug it into my double adapter and
then plug the whole double adapter back into the fuse box then replace the lid so that fuse box
lid is back on and now i'm going to follow my main power leads with this blue lead so they follow the
same route underneath the vehicle of course every vehicle is different but make sure you route your
cables out of the way away from anything moving or hot and ideally use some corrugated tubing to give
it an extra layer of protection and a couple of cable tires along the length of your vehicle will
keep it tucked up and out of the way so i've run my wiring from the starter battery underneath the
vehicle put some corrugated tubing on it and cable tied it up out of the way my last three wires i
need to connect this blue one needs to connect to the blue wire on the back of the dc dc charger
my red one from the starter battery here connects to this middle terminal post
and the black one obviously to the black terminal post at the top so let's get into it
as always protect your crimp joints with heat shrink then ensure you arrange the terminals
then the washer then the nut so everything can be tightened up securely now all the wiring
inside our 12 volt control box and associated with the adventure king's dc dc charger
is all connected now and ready to go but what i'm going to suggest is that we now refit our fuses
and actually test that everything's working before we put the front of the 12 volt control box back
on if everything checks out we're ready to button it up and we're done so the led up the top shows
that the second battery or deep cycle battery is connected the led next to car shows that your
starter battery is connected and the led next to AGM indicates that we set it up for an AGM battery
now that everything's working let's tighten up the lid the adventure king's mark ii dc-dc charger
is installed and functioning perfectly we even managed to install it onto this 12v control box
which makes it look so neat and tidy and makes the install that much easier if you do have the 25 amp
model like we have here then you'll note that we did connect that solar input to this quick connect
plug which means you can plug your solar panel or solar blanket directly in without a regulator
and this will do all the work for you so if you're driving or you're sitting at camp with your solar
panel set up you can rely on the adventure king's mark ii dc dc charger to keep your
batteries fully charged all the time if you want to learn more about the adventure king's dc dc
chargers then make sure you hit that like button subscribe and check out the rest of the channel