1

Tires and wheels! / Re: Larger holes for lug nuts?

« on: March 30, 2020, 11:25:36 am »

This is a super late response, but I did this with a set of Mercedes wheels with nice snow tires on them.

I went to harbor freight, bought their oversize drill bit set, and used the closest size to the bolts. The mercedes wheels also used 12mm ball radius on the lug bolts, so I had to buy new lug bolts with 12mm balls and 14mm bolt dimensions.

They sure do make these wheel interactions with the vehicle complicated: centering rings, lug bolt diameters and lengths, ball seat dimensions, Einpresstiefe, etc, etc

2

Westfalia / Re: Westfalia Weekender aux battery, upgrades, solar, etc thread.

« on: January 22, 2018, 01:42:28 pm »

A picture is worth a thousand words, alas, I cannot post anything with attachments. log into the ev update yahoo group.

All I did was move the spade wire connectors from the socket to the battery, red to red, brown wire to ground.

The old battery positive terminal connector needs to be isolated with tape or something.

3

Westfalia / Re: Westfalia Weekender aux battery, upgrades, solar, etc thread.

« on: November 07, 2017, 03:26:51 pm »

I posted this on the ev_update yahoo group, but I went a different direction fixing my Aux battery after 17 years in my 2000MVWK. I got a $14 7AH lead-acid battery. I removed my cool box long ago, and I only use the Aux for the lights and sometimes running a 80W laptop inverter. 7AH will run out after about 4 hours of lights (theoretically, I haven't run the lights that long).  I just pulled the connectors off the power port for the cool box and hooked them to the cheap battery.

The reason I did this fix is because the ancient Aux battery was pulling my Alternator voltage way down, and my main battery was only 75% full all the time. Replacing the old Aux  brought the voltage up from low 13s to 14.2V...

This is not the perfect fix for everyone, but if you hardly use the Aux battery, but would still like lights occasionally, this should work quite well. I'll consider a Li-ion solution if they're cheaper when this one goes bad (probably in 3-7 years).

4

Westfalia / switched power in the engine compartment?

« on: October 27, 2017, 03:32:00 pm »

I want to add a heater core and radiator to the cooling circuit upstream of the ATF cooler. Can anyone suggest a clean way to get 12V to power it? I don't want the fan to run when the key is in off or accessory, so switched is best.

Thanks for your ideas.