Horse Trailer to Toy Hauler Conversion

[Dan's EB]

Since I got rid of the slant wall I had a bit more room in the kitchen/ living area.
Started building a sink base cabinet. 1" angle iron.

 

[Dan's EB]

Made a cabinet for the garage.

 

[Dan's EB]

Somewhere along the way I made a paper towel holder using a horseshoe my wife found.

The space to the right of the seat is for a cabinet along the wall, there are two doors on that side so one of them needs to go away.

 

[Dan's EB]

I bought two 330W solar panels, two 1200W inverters, a solar charger controller and two 170Ah batteries. All used off craigslist. The plan is to have enough solar and battery to last a long weekend without a generator. I took a rough guess at my power usage and decided how much solar I needed.
I hope to get most of it installed this weekend. I need to make a battery mount so I can stack the batteries and figure how I'm going to mount the solar panels. They will fit in the hay loft that's already on the roof so I'll use that, just need to make some brackets t hold them down.
A few more pics.

 

[Penetrode Offroad]

Cool man, I dig the horse trailer conversion.

 

[RPS1030]

Since I got rid of the slant wall I had a bit more room in the kitchen/ living area.
Started building a sink base cabinet. 1" angle iron.

Following for sure. Have discussed the slant wall going away for more room instead of parts/tool storage in the back on my Hauler.

 

[Dan's EB]

I made a bit of progress over the long weekend. I got the solar panels mounted and a battery box rack thing made. So I did some math and at 1200W at 12 volts I'm pulling 100 Amps to the inverter, max power. All I had on hand was 6AWG cables so I made it work by doubling up the wires battery to battery and to the cut off switch . From the batt to the inverters I ran to the local O'riellys and picked up 4AWG battery cables and promptly cut them up to fit. I didn't have a crimp tool for lugs that I'm using, I'm too cheap to buy one so I made a crimp tool.

Most everything is mounted to the wall, hopefully today I will cut and crimp the negative side batt cables.

 

[Dan's EB]

I finished the battery rack and slopped some paint on it. 2 screws hold it to the floor and 4 hold it to the wall so it doesn't tip over. If it's worth building it's worth overbuilding, right.

 

[Dan's EB]

I needed a crimp tool for the battery cable lugs so I made one from what I had in my scrap metal bucket. It works but not great. I soldered the connection after crimping. I think the lower cup die needs to be deeper.

 

[Dan's EB]

The inverters are 1200W each and I have 2 so I'm expecting a max of 100 Amps power draw on the batteries, worst case. All I had on hand was 6AWG yellow and green wire so that's what I used. I doubled them up to handle the current, crimped and soldered lugs. I broke down and got some 4 AWG battery cables from the auto parts store to feed the inverters.
I still need to make the negative batt cable to the inverters.

 

[Dan's EB]

I got everything hooked up, batteries, solar controller, inverters. ran my shop vac for a few minutes and the voltage dropped to 12.3 and the inverter shut off. Shop vac says on the tag it draws 9 amps. I may need an inverter that can handle a lower voltage instead of cutting off at 12.3 VDC.
It was already dark out so no solar power. Once the power draw was cut off the batt voltage settled in at 13VDC.
I'm going shopping for inverters and checking specs.

 

[350TacoZilla]

I know next to zip about actual solar setups vs the plug directly to 12v battery kind but it seems like the way to go in a build if you have the money to go big enough.

 

[Dan's EB]

Yea, big enough for what is the question. Are you running low power stuff, refrigerator, water pump occasionally, LED lights or are you gonna go big to run an A/C unit. Big difference.

 

[Dan's EB]

Just finished putting all new brakes on the trailer. and 4 tires on the truck.

Trailer is done enough for now. Wife and I are leaving Phx tomorrow 6/21/23 for Casper Wyoming to see BIL and fam. Will camp on Casper mountain a few nights. Next is on to Yellowstone since I've never been there, maybe I'll get to see someone try to pet a buffalo. Then it's down to Colorado. Plan on Ouray and surrounding area to sxs. Then off to Moab for a day or so then back to Phoenix.
Should be a good time to check out what we like and don't like about the trailer and what needs to be changed.

 

[ridered3]

Got any updates for this thread?

 

[Dan's EB]

Got any updates for this thread?

Not really, been busy with other projects. The next step is I need to find some tanks that are thin to fit underneath. Fresh, grey and black. Also need to decide how big they need to be. I'm thinking 10 to 15 gallons for black, 40 ish grey and around 60 fresh water. Really depends on dimensions and what will fit.

BTW, the solar works great.

 

[ridered3]

Not really, been busy with other projects. The next step is I need to find some tanks that are thin to fit underneath. Fresh, grey and black. Also need to decide how big they need to be. I'm thinking 10 to 15 gallons for black, 40 ish grey and around 60 fresh water. Really depends on dimensions and what will fit.

BTW, the solar works great.

Cool deal. Check out the RecPro website for all sorts of various sized tanks. Their website lists actual dimensions for most tanks so would give you a pretty good idea of what to find to fit in your given area.

I ended up buying my last three tanks from there (40 gallon fresh, 30 gray, and 19 gallon black) for different trailers. After shopping around, they ended up being cheaper for a higher quality product than various sellers on Amazon etc.

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Back when we went riding and camping more often, our typical trip was for 4 days and 3 nights for 2 of us. Never had an issue with running low on water or gray/black tanks becoming even close to full. Our current enclosed with living quarters has a 55g fresh (plus 12 in the water heater), 40g gray, and 19 g black.