MarkObtinaro said:
I had several thoughts as I have been reading about your deconstruction.
Since you have so much of the dash board taken apart it would be a GREAT time to swap the air wiper motors for electric motors. Luke @ US Coach has some very affordable retrofit units that are not very expensive.
I understand taking out the coach A/C but I have to wonder if you are going to be putting back in the front heater/defroster core. It will be very difficult to heat or defrost the front of the bus without some sort of heater/defroster.
The alternator may only be 270 AMPS but it is a 24-volt alternator. That is about the same amount of juice as a 500 AMPS 12-volt alternator. It was designed to be able to operate the coach A/C system at idle without draining the batteries. The condenser fan(s) alone took about 50 AMPS.
Make sure as you are taking out wiring that you keep the 12-vdc and 24-vdc wiring clearly marked. Your coach may not have any 12-vdc but if you do and you put 24-vdc into it you will have smoke escaping from your wiring. Also, if you only put 12-vdc into the 24-vdc side of things you won't have stuff working.
It might be a good time to swap out all of the 24-vdc lights and any remaining blower fans with 12-vdc versions. The cost of 24-vdc anything is considerably more expensive than 12-vdc versions of the same thing. It is much easier and less expensive to find 12-vdc LED's or upgraded headlights than it is to find 24-vdc LED's or upgraded headlights.
With everything torn apart it would be fairly simple to step down the voltage at the alternator or swap out the 24-vdc alternator with a 12-vdc version. About the only thing that really needs 24-vdc would be the starter and there are newer 12-vdc alternatives that will spin faster and won't weigh 65 lbs.
Click to expand...
Didn't see this until just now. Everything but the wipers and what voltage we're going with is taken care of. I knew there were electric wiper motors that fit in, but hadn't looked into what they cost yet. They're likely what we'll use. 12 or 24, still contemplating this.
Because many of the components on the bus that I can't produce myself are already 24 volt, sticking with said voltage would be easy. The lighting voltage I don't care about. Super easy to wire accordingly. Solar charge controllers do better at 24. DC to AC inverter uses less amperage at 24. I've already nailed down 24-volt replacement parts for cheap that I can swap into whatever appliance I need.
Going with the common 12 volts, almost anything can be had anywhere. Wouldn't have to buy batteries in pairs for the solar battery bank (two 12's). I thought that we might set up the solar and engine systems to be separate. I'm still steadily weighing the pros and cons of 12 and 24 volts. With 24 volts, I can charge my cordless tools without stepping up the voltage.
Watts is watts, so it's a trade-off for either choice. As I peel through the rest of the OE wiring, I'll see how much of it really needs 12 volts.