Hello everybody! good evening to you and welcome back! Glad you guys are here I know I'm super glad to be here now I Say good evening to you because it is in fact the evening. that is right I am here out at the shop I'm here after hours and uh I'm here late because I wanted to make some more progress on Project escar or Silverado or escalator uh whatever we want to call it has not getting a has not gotten a name yet but those are the three contenders so far. uh anyway what I wanted to do this evening and the reason I stayed late is I was doing some more work on my supplemental electricity power supply system that I have installed uh back inside of my toolbox. The last time we had visited this truck I did a bunch of or I kind of give a tour on all the interior updates that I had done.

We were doing some work on the electrical system and I had finally finalized some of the connections. uh last, uh, last time I was here late on this I installed some Yukon sun visors I do get that these are the wrong color but I wanted to proof of concept them uh, before, uh before I took them back apart and reupholstered them. uh what? I had to do uh to accommodate the this particular style of sun visor was we actually had to move the clip in the headliner from this area over to this area and because of that I had to find the metal clip that was attached to the top of the cab behind the headliner, uncp that clip, move it over, and then cut a new hole in the in the unit here. We also whoa, Gravitos Sideways gravatas.

We also had to run some new wires to connect the lights vanity lights. That was the other reason why I wanted to switch out to these types of mirrors is both of these mirrors have vanity lights. when the Silverado mirrors uh, never had any vanity lights. Anyway, what brings us uh to this episode is I have uh I've installed the power supply wires to all of the switches up here in the overhead console.

Now if you guys recall from Uh the other episodes on this build, I had to create and I ran a uh I think it was like a 10 wire wiring harness from up here in this console area, through the headliner, down the pillar, down behind the Hbac box, through the side of the firewall and it comes out. See if we can't see it? Yep, there it is down there. It comes out from side of the cab, goes behind the battery, down into the frame rail, and then it runs all the way back inside of the frame rail and it comes up through the bed, up through the bottom of this tool box. and then that harness is supposed to terminate.

Well, it does terminate right here. Now we can see I have one circuit already connected. See that right there? that goes to this uh, golf cart motor solenoid that I'm using as a connection solenoid between this large D4 battery and the two regular batteries up in the front of the truck. So I realized that this harness is kind of a mess right now.

I Would like to point out that all of these circuits right here are connected to one of the switches up there. with the exception of three, there's more circuits than there are switches, but I figured I would run extra wires in case I needed them later. Anyway, what we're going to do later on and not going to happen anywhere near today, is we're going to take those terminated connectors and we're going to connect those to the Uh, the relay power supply wires or the relay trigger wires rather con cap inside of this pre-built fuse box if I can't get it open. Yep! so we've got four relays in here, as well as four additional circuits.

So we've got an eight circuit box here. Four relays will be powered and then I can also run for other uh, uh, other, uh, other loads on the system if I if I chose those two Anyway, what we'll need to do later on is I have to build a box to mount this box on, Then we're going to take the big cable, connect that to the power supply which is going to be the secondary power system, and then we have to wire up. Uh, all the different loads that the truck is going to have. Um, a couple of those are going to be this forward facing light bar right here, the rear facing light bar here, the fuel pump right here, and I haven't decided on uh what I'm going to do with the other other circuit.

yeah, the other relayed circuit. those are all Heavy current loads right there. So I definitely want to run the relays with those. Um, if I do like interior lights inside of this box or like some bed lights or something like that, I can just use the uh, the non relayed circuits and uh, draw power from those anyway, but that will happen.

That will have to happen later on. So anyway, the reason for this video now that we're all on the same page with what's going on here with this electrical system, sort of uh what I want to do is revisit and uh and kind of redo the proof of concept video. So to refresh everybody: I've got a 200 amp deep cycle I think it's a Renegy battery 12vt battery in the back of this truck I mean the things. it's ginormous.

Okay, I've got one I think it's a 6,000 wat sinewave inverter and then another 2,000 W sinewave inverter now the big inverter down there I have that connected to this power strip that you'll see right here on the back of the box. The way that I've designed this system is these: Inver ERS run independently off of the power solely from this battery. so it's pretty much a self-contained uh, emergency power supply system. Um, I do plan on putting like a solar panel up there and installing a little charge controller just to maintain that.

Let's say, the vehicle's parked for a few days or whatever and I happen to run some loads. Uh, what that'll guarantee is that that battery always maintains its uh, its Optimum level of charge. Now where this system gets good is how I've integrated this power system into the vehicle's electrical system for charging purposes, auxiliary ant purposes, and uh, pretty much any other purpose. I So desire.

As I mentioned earlier, we have this: uh 300 I think it's a 300 AMP golf cart uh, golf cart motor relay now, or solenoid rather. Now, half of this solenoid runs to this Junction blocks down, block down here and then that feeds power of course over to the battery, the other side of the solenoid again. ALS so runs down into the frame of the vehicle, down through. see that wiring lowess, that hole right there.

It runs down through the box, through the bed into the frame and then it runs forward and it connects to this breaker right here. So I can manually isolate that system or I can potentially give that system power. and I say, potentially because that solenoid back there has got to be tripped before the two systems become connected. And I've got that solenoid on this switch now real quick.

I'd Like to point out that our current electrical power voltage on the primary system and the front of the truck here is a 12.8 Now I know the battery out back is a little bit lower because I had the inverters on earlier and I ran some load. So what we're going to do is connect the two systems together. We're going to watch this voltage fall as the system attempts to equalize. Watch this.

We're going to hit the button 127. That's enough. button off back up to 128. So what happened is when I connected those two systems.

When that solenoid was actuated, it effectively made the two batteries up front connected with the big battery in the back and it tied them all together and that caused the voltage of both systems to equalize and become the same voltage. So let's say the fronts were at 127 or 129 maybe and the one in the back was at 126 or 125. They would find somewhere in the middle and they would equalize as they're connected. Now the reason for that is let's say I'm running a bunch of loads in the back of the truck for a period of time.

I can go ahead connect the two systems and then what that will do is it'll utilize this vehicle's charging system in order to maintain a charge and Supply amperage back to this power system back here and that is what I intend to prove today with some loads, some voltmeters, and some Amp meters. So the first thing we must do here is power on the inverters and we're going to begin to draw some load off of this system so we'll fire that one up just for fun. We'll turn the big one on right down there and our power strip power strip is now turned on. Okay now look at here.

we've got AC output voltage on this big inverter as as well as DC input voltage which is telling us we're at 128 input and it's making 120 volts at its output. Let's verify that with a Uh another meter that will tell us what the voltage is on the output side. we're looking 11 19.3 is what it says and down here it's saying 120. So that's point8 of a volt off that is close enough for me.

I'll take that. Okay, we're going to need a volt meter and then we're going to need the amp clamp as well. We're using multiple meters. Okay, first off, we'll take the Uh, the Fluke meter, turn that on to DC voltage and get this guy connected so we will connect.

Put that one straight to ground right there and that leaves our power side side to check. So we got 12.72-ounce close enough. Let's take the other meter here. We're going to turn that one on Vols and we're going to be utilizing an amp clamp so what we'll do is stick that on to.

Let's just go for the positive wire. It's saying we're drawing power already so let's shut off everything real fast and see if that thing falls down to no current draw. Okay looking good. Nothing is coming in and out of this battery right now.

Let's go ahead and power it back up and not much is going through 3 amps. So here let's plug in our handy dandy uh heat gun that's bent and we're going to see if this thing is drawing or if this meter is uh, metering properly. So we're going to go ahead and fire this thing up. Keep in mind this is running off of battery power so we should expect that's fine.

We should expect voltage to drop out of this battery and we're down to 12. Let's see how many amps we're drawing here. This is AC amps. It's pulling 11.3 AC amps and over here on the DC side, it's saying it's pulling 70 amps out of that battery right there.

Let me go check and make sure I don't have these two systems tied together I think I do because I want to see like a 100 or so amps? It should be roughly around a like a 10 to1 ratio and yeah, yeah, I left that connected. Okay, yeah, check it out. Look primary side is down to 12.2 volts. Let's go ahead and disconnect.

We're going to see the vehicle's battery rise. Okay, so now what was happening is some of the load that was being pulled from the inverter from this system was coming out of those front batteries in the truck. And then yeah, there here we go look at that. 115 amps is what it's pulling.

So that tells me that this thing is accurately measuring DC amps. That thing is accurately measuring AC amps. Okay, so we have verified that the system does tie together. It does produce adequate amount of electricity to run appliances and I could stack other loads on this.

I may do it. Uh, but what I want to do really is prove out the Dual alternator system that's designed to charge this. So what we will do since we now know this system back here is working. Let's take our amp probe up front to the alternators and we're going to see number one how much power they deliver under a full Lo full load.

Then we're also going to see how much power is actually being sent back here to the Box itself because all of that power is coming back through one single power wire which is attached again over here at that switch. So what we've got going on under the hood is our regular alternator for the truck. and then I have gone and installed a secondary alternator for this truck. Now What I will do when we start this: I'm going to disconnect the connector on this secondary alternator and in theory it shouldn't power on I Just broke that connector.

Look at that. Breaking my own stuff. Unbelievable. Okay, so first thing we're going to do is restart the truck and verify that in fact, it is not supplying power back here yet.

Ooh warm, this is good. So let's check. Check our voltage real fast on our secondary side: Still Still 117 Again, that's battery voltage here. But if I switch it over to the other side making 12 and some change.

Okay, back inside to check power output. we're at 127. Yeah, look at that. Not quite enough time.

Give it a minute, she'll wake up 12 seconds later, we're at 138. See that right there? 13.8 volts. Let's go check out back and see what kind of power we're not getting back here. And and 117.

So we're still not bringing power back here just yet. Now let's go ahead. connect the two. We're going to watch voltage fall as they equalize.

Watch this. 13 6, 2, 1, 13. Yep, battery voltage fell because there's a load on the system back here. Keep in mind we're only one running one alternator.

check in voltage. We're up to 1211 with the load on it. 1211 12 volts. Okay, 127.

All right. So now let's go fire up that amp meter and see what kind of amperage is running back. So, we have already proven that this amp clamp is somewhat accurate. at least accurate enough to tell us if we have amperage.

So let's make sure that the secondary alternator is not producing amperage. If you look right here, that's the output wire that connects right here to that little jumper box so we can clamp this right here and it will tell us if we have any power output from this Alator, we're connected. Nope, No power. Okay, let's go try to clamp the other alternator, see how much output it is making.

All right right here, right? there is the wire from this alternator to the battery system. Let's go ahead and get that clamped on and this alternator is outputting over 100 amps. Right now. that's almost at Max Capacity This is supposed to be a 145 amp alternator here.

Let's go ahead and do this. Let's go ahead and disconnect the two systems. We should be watching voltage come up. This is good and I'm going to fire up a bunch of loads in here.

We're going to turn on all the lights. We're going to turn on the blower full blast. I'm going to turn on the headlights that's going to engage Bamby mode high beams, low beams and fog lights at the same time and that is set up just on the high beam switch, all the lights come on. So now headed back.

It looks like with maximum loads on the vehicle, this alternator is only producing 61 amps. Okay, so let's see what what it does. When we power it back on 14 volts, 139 Voltage was dropping, our load is still loading and single alterator output. it's up to 107 amps.

Let's add some more load to it. What do you say? Take a fan and plug that into our power strip. Come here, fan, get in there. good, that's still turned on high and maximum speed.

There we go. So now we're pulling more power out of the inverter out of the big battery and theoretically that should pull More Voltage down on the front system here: 103 amps. Let's see what system volts are hanging out at 12.5 So this system is not happy at 12.5 volts. Look at I Know Let's add another fan into the equation here.

Plug that guy in. check voltage real fast. 1193 Let's fire up this fan. We're going to Max this inverter out if I have to.

We're going to prove this with inconclusive results. 11.8 So this system is handling the loads that are on it. That's two fans and a big old hair. Drive So far.

so let's go ahead and add another fan. Here we go. That's that one over there big boy in the corner. Let's go see how bad our voltage is suffering.

Now we're down to 123. Okay, 12.3 12.4 So this alternator is working. Its little butt off. 106, 102, 101.

All right. let's go ahead. We're going to kick on the high idle feature in the truck while simultaneously checking voltage right here. So there's our voltage: 12.3 I'm going to hit high idle.

Idle's going up. We're at about 900 right now and voltage has come up to it's 124. All right, let's go up. One more bump on the idle and 125.

Okay, let's go check output. now. we're going to take this down to 900 and we'll run it at 900 High idle. Let's go see.

we got a little bit more voltage out of it. Let's see if we got any more amps out of it. The survey says 114 amp. Okay, that tells me that for this vehicle's engine speed, we're all out of amps on that alternator.

I Cannot get any more more power out of that unit. So we're going back down to regular idle. So basically, at this rate, this whole system and these loads are going to end up discharging the vehicle's batteries over time. The thing just can't keep up.

So now, let's go and see what it does when we connect our second alternator. So the first thing I'll do. we're going to leave this one connect and we're going to take this elevator and power this guy on Lo right here. Heard it.

Come on. Look at that one. now. Alternator Number one is dropping in its output.

Alterator Number one is making 7078. It's still falling. Okay, and that's at regular idle. This is not high idle engaged.

Let's check voltage. look at there 132. So we took an alternator that was maxed out and could not Chooch anymore. We gave it an assistant and now it's back down to its nominal operating amp output of 70 65.

Something like that, Let's remove the clamp from the primary alternator back down to zero and let's see how much current our second alternator is producing. 133. Wow, that thing's running. It's uh, it's running away.

Probably because we have an under or an overdrive pulle under this alator that would actually spin faster than that one. So this one's making 115 amps. That one is making 70 65. So this alternator seems to want to take over because it's got a better pulley.

Let's go out back and check on all of our loads. We got the hair dryer drying, blowing the fan on it, circulating the diesel exhaust times. Two two fans get it and our voltage back here 12. Vols Okay, so here.

what? I'll do. I'm going to disconnect this again and I'm going to put the battery system out back in a state of discharge. So I'm going to continue to run all the loads, but it's just running off the battery, not the alternators and it's going to bring this system down. Meanwhile, I'm going to bring in additional loads to put on this and we're going to max out these inverters.

Once they're maxed out, we'll take a voltage measurement uh, with the meter. We're then going to reconnect the system and we're going to see if the alternators can keep up with the new demand. and if we need to, we can bump up high idle to see if it can stabilize and sustain those loads. More fans coming in.

Fantastic! H Fantastic! Get it? Let's plug that guy in and maximum there's my on button that one. Full Speed Ahead More fan action. We'll put that one there to blow the exhaust out. Hey, look at here.

The In MERS are starting to talk to us I Can hear them making noises. We're down to 10 Vol DC 113 Vols Output: The fans are running to cool off the inverters uh, as well as this fan. uh, or this inverter over here as well. Cool.

Everybody's flowing. This is good. Still down at Uh. 11 volts on our battery.

Let's add more load to the equation. We got another fan. uh-oh it's all she's got. which inverter was doing that? this one.

Those are low voltage alarms. rut. R So we've reached the maximum current output of that battery. I Think let's grab the meter and see how much, uh, how many amps is being pulled from that battery.

We only had 34 amps on the output side. Let's see what we get here. So this battery 200 amps out of that battery? Look at that. that's pulling a lot of power.

That's pretty much it's maximum draw. Yep, Okay, let's go ahead. fire the system up. 143 13 That brought it down to 13.

The low voltage alarms are going off and now look now. look. we're only getting 28 amps that's on the ground side. Let's switch it over to the hot side.

30 40 amps. Okay, let's go see how much power is going from the front of the truck to the back. That's the cable running down into the frame. See there: 140 147 Amp 150 154 155 Okay, so it's making some power and it's sending all that power right back through here.

So so now that our low voltage alarms have stopped going off, let's add more load. We're going to plug this fan in and then we're going to plug the rest of the shop in to this fan over here. Because why not? It's got a breaker on it. No worries.

plug that in. let's go hit the switch, turn on the wall. Voila! Okay, it's on. But I Hear the alarms going up again.

What do we got? Yeah, 10 volts I Don't think this. uh, this system can perform or pull any more amps out of it. Um I Have an idea. Let's do the switcheroo here.

Plug that one in there. Then we'll plug the shop wall in to this inverter. This one's making. uh output 900 WT 800 WT 11 1/2 volts.

Okay, so that's with the heater. One fan, two, 3, four five fans, some lights, more lights. Let's go check total current under 70 amps. Woohoo! Sending some power back, let's step the idle up a little bit.

Stage one: Increase idle. There we go. 170 H Let's see what our voltage is looking like on the truck side. We're suffering a little bit below 14 And the digital gauge? Where are we at here? 13 volts.

Okay, let's shut down the loads inside of the truck. 132. All right, a little bit more idle. There we go see what we get now.

180 amps. It's a lot of Amper going out back. let's start shutting down loads before. I Uh, I Break something.

think over here it boost. I Can hear the turbo spooled up powering everything down. Stinky. All right guys.

I'm pretty pry sure that this solidifies that. This system functions is capable of functioning, can run longterm with moderate to light loads, and it can do short-term burst on very heavy loads. Let's see if we're charging again. 12.7 Yeah, power's coming up 12.8 Power all that stuff down and I realize this is all rigged together.

This is for demonstration purposes only. If I had to actually use this system. Uh, in real life I would not just have 10,000 extension cords just going all willy-nilly wherever. Now most folks would say Ray just get a generator and you're right I should just get a generator and I have a generator I Really do.

And if we have when we have power outage situations, I 100% use my generator. But the deal is is that generator requires a refuel every like 5 to 6 hours. Okay now I don't need that generator at night time when everybody's asleep. All I need at night are a couple lights, we need to run the fridges, and maybe the internet, and a fan or two.

All of that can be done with just this inverter right here. Just that one single one. Okay, so there's no sense in running an entire generator set when I can get away with running one inverter. Now this battery should suffice with that load all night long.

If I need to run more of a load, I can power the truck up, run it at idle, and it will run that generator or that inverter and it'll also run any other load. I put on that inverter and I can adjust idle, which will adjust alternator output depending on how much load I need to use. Now the reason that I said at night is because that gasoline generator is super loud. It's like all night it vibrates, It makes a bunch of noise.

Uh, and I've got to refuel it. Now the truck is not loud I can run this thing all night in my driveway even at high idle and nobody would hear it I Mean you could, but H it's it's not as loud as the gasoline generator. that's what I'm saying. So we can sleep at night without the annoying generator sound I Can also sleep at night without knowing that everybody can hear my generator running including people outside of my house uh, security reasons and whatnot.

generators get stolen and it'll also help me conserve my gasoline. as typically I've only got uh, maybe 15 to 20 gallons of gasoline on hand at any point in time, so that's a maximum of like 2 days and two nights. I'll burn up 20 gallons, no problem. But the truck has 30 gallons on board as well as 90 Gall in the auxillary tank.

So if I only run this at night and I run my gasoline generator during the daytime, it stands to reason that I can get many, many, many days and potentially even weeks of electricity outside of the Uh the fuel that I may or may not have on hand. So it is for that reason that this system exists. Uh, it does have uh, other perks and benefits to it. For example, if I'm out in a remote area and I need electricity I have some and I don't have to run extension cords.

but uh, back to the point of this video. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to explain to everybody kind of my uh, my position on why I built this I'm glad I was able to hopefully shed some light on the proof concept here and prove that it in fact does work. There's some heat in this thing. it it does in fact work.

and it will work, especially in an emergency situation, which is exactly why it's here. So I'm happy with it. I like it I think it will work out very well for me and for my practical purposes, it may not work for everybody, but I'm good with it. Plus I get all these really cool switches and stuff in here.

But anyway, guys, like I said earlier, it is dark out, it's late at night. I'm packing this up I'm ready to go home. so I'm going to go ahead and close this video out right now. I Will do such things as always by thanking each and every one of you guys for watching this video as always I Hope you enjoyed this video.

If you did enjoy this video, please let me know what you think about it in the comment section down below. Do not forget to tap that like button while you're down there and most importantly, have El A fantastic day! See you guys later in video into Chevrolet into Power Station into transmission.