Today's job was a bit cleaner than yesterday's.
I had all sorts of ideas about how I might install the solar panel.
I had found a couple of really neat ideas online including (the one I really wanted) to mount the panel to a slider, mounted to the underside of the roof rack...so the solar panel slid out and back in again.
However I wasn't able to do that due to insufficient space between roof rack and roof.
Back to option 1: drill holes in the roof of my vehicle and hard-mount the solar panel onto the roof.
I did my best to do it right first time!! I did have 1 hole that ended up being in the wrong place, but only because on the inside it came down through behind a molding/vehicle structure that I couldn't access to put a nut on and I really wanted to avoid using rivets as I plan to drive a lot of bumpy outback roads and don't want my panels coming off.
The whole process took a lot longer than I had anticipated. I had to remove the interior lining which meant the sun visors had to come off, as well as the rear view mirror, the interior light, sear belt fastener etc etc.
Now that the lining is off, I am not sure I will put it back up. For now at least I will need the exposed ceiling in order to run the wiring for solar and lighting.
Ultimately I would like to buy/install dynamat pro onto the ceiling for sound deadening/insulation, but that is not within my current budget.
The solar panels went on well.
All brackets, nuts and bolts were siliconed into place so they remain waterproof. I also double-nutted them on the inside.
I had to drill an unfortunately big hole to feed the cables into the vehicle. I chose not to do that on top of the vehicle, but rather on the side and the cables are partially concealed by the roof rack support upright.
It's amazing how good it feels to have the solar panels actually on the vehicle.
It means I can now carry on with the interior build, configuring the interior based around where I'm going to put the solar panel controller.
TIP OF THE DAY
Use WD40 to remove excess silicon or sound deadening goop.
FIND OF THE DAY
A rubber bung in the middle of the road at an intersection stop sign... opened car door, stepped out and got it!.
It is now keeping my solar panel cables in place in the hole in the side of the vehicle. Perfect.
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