4WD EXPEDITIONS · Vehicle Preparation
CAMP AND TOURING SYSTEMS: POWER, WATER AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
The point
After this lesson you can size, build and pack a remote touring system from your own measured consumption, so power, water and fuel are calculated certainties rather than hopes.
Half the answer, free
The Technique
- Start with consumption, not capacity. The universal error in touring power systems is to pick a battery size first and then discover it does not last. Do it the other way. Every load in the vehicle draws a current for a number of hours per day, and the product of those two is amp hours per day. A fridge is the dominant load and it does not run continuously: it cycles, and its duty cycle depends on ambient temperature, how full it is, how well it is insulated from direct sun, and how often the lid is opened. In the Kimberley in October a fridge that behaves modestly in a Melbourne garage will run a very different duty cycle. Lighting, a device charger, a water pump, a diesel heater, a communications device: list them all, estimate honest daily hours, and total it. That number, in amp hours per day, is the specification for everything downstream.
- Then understand what a battery will actually give you, which is less than its label. A lead acid or AGM battery should not be routinely taken below about half its rated capacity if you want it to last, which means a nominally large battery delivers roughly half that in usable energy. Lithium iron phosphate chemistry allows a much deeper usable discharge and is lighter for the same usable energy, which matters enormously given the previous lesson, but it brings its own requirements: it needs a battery management system, it does not like being charged below freezing, and it needs a charging source that will actually deliver its charging profile rather than a lead acid profile. Match your daily consumption against usable capacity, not rated capacity, and then decide how many days of autonomy you want with no charging input at all. Two days of true autonomy is a reasonable minimum in remote country.
- Charging sources are three, and they fail in different ways. The alternator through a simple isolator is the oldest approach: cheap, robust, and increasingly ineffective on modern vehicles, because variable voltage and smart charging systems mean the alternator may drop its output voltage low enough that an auxiliary battery never reaches a full charge. A DC to DC charger solves that by taking whatever the alternator gives and converting it to a proper multi-stage charge profile for your specific chemistry, at a controlled current. It is the single most reliable input on a modern vehicle and it also protects the starting battery. Solar is the third, and it is the one that gets oversold. Solar output depends on panel angle to the sun, temperature, shading and cleanliness, and a panel flat on a roof under a shady camp tree in winter produces a small fraction of its rating. Solar is excellent when you sit in one place for days in open country and nearly worthless when you are moving through gorges under canopy. Most well-built systems run DC to DC as the primary and solar as the supplement, not the reverse.
Still under the glass
- Power, water and fuel sized from your real numbers, not guesswork, so remote days never run short
- 6 more technique steps
- The 5 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
- The drill that builds the reflex
- The safety non-negotiables
It opens when you book a trip that runs 4wd expeditions - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.
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