PeterD wrote:

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Hasten slowly! When are you going? Don't rush into things unless you have a few months to get the job done.

Your Jayco is wired to allow you to be able to use your tugs (tow vehicle) battery if the wiring has not been fiddled with. What trailer plug do you have on the Expanda? On the older Jaycos, pin 2 of the trailer plug was used to supply power to the van to power the lights and the fridge. If you get your tug wired so that there is a hot wire from the battery (through a fuse) to the pin 2 in the trailer socket you will be able to power your lights from the tugs battery. You will get a couple of nights out of your battery before you have to go for a run in the tug to recharge your battery. This is how we camped off power in our vans 15 or more years ago. There were extremely few vans before the year 2000 that had batteries supplied with them, you had to make special arrangements with the builder before they would fit batteries.

Here are a couple of Jayco documents for vans built after yours. One is a photocopy and the other is PDF document. You will note that the PDF one has the battery circuit in dotted lines. That is hoe the vans were delivered from the factory. If the new owners wanted a battery the agent fitted them before they were handed over.

 

 

 

-- Edited by PeterD on Thursday 11th of February 2021 04:00:38 PM

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 Hi

If you intend to set up this way as PeterD mentioned in his reply I would highly recommend that you put at least a 100 amp agm deep cycle that is isolated from your tugs battery.

There is not much fun having a flat battery when you leave or worse when your on your lonesome.

Cheers

If you want to keep it simple until you know what you precisely want to do.

A white plastic bag over a USB rechargeable torch gives you nice soft lighting. The current torches go for days.

Consider headlights. They are an excellent form of bush illumination and. They put the light exactly where you want it and, of course, leave both hands free.

And don't forget the older style lighting - fuel lamps. I used one in the bush for many years and actually prefer their light to that of LEDs, they are a warmer light and do not have the sharp cut-off of LED lights:

Coleman lamp

No messing around with solar panels in forests and the like, a 1L bottle of Shellite will last a couple of weeks minimum at this time of the year.

Troy, I see you are in SA.

As an option, that may be even good for longer term, consider this.

Home of 12 Volt at Pooraka in the northern suburbs, and Mt Barker, sell the Thumper range of 12 volt battery packs. They have a range of amp hour units, and when I purchased mine years ago, you could get a lead that allowed you to connect to your van via the 7 pin plug. It effectively became the van battery. A flat 7 pin adapter will do the same if your van has a 12 pin plug. They also come with an in car charging system, or you can connect a solar panel during the day to charge them.

Using them allows you to use your vans normal lights, including the awning light, and all 12 volt inside. I would recommend the 105 aH version if you look to use it to power a Waeco or such as well.

They are not cheap, but do last, and will serve you for years to come. It may be worth calling them to find out what they have available if you are close, and looking for a longer term solution. You can also get them repackaged, at the cost of a similar size decent brand AGM battery when they get older. Ours is coming up for 13 years old, and I had it repackaged a second time mid last year.

Hope this helps.