Wiring My Teardrop Camper For 12V & 120V With Battery Power

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Today is the day. I'm going to wire up the batteries and the inverter for the camper, the little teardrop. And I'm also going to drill, I don't want to, but I'm going to, a hole in the teardrop for 12 volts.

[00:00:15]Let's make it happen this time on Ham Radio Tube.

[00:00:21]So, I got my buddy Bill here from Ham Radio Techtonics.

[00:00:25]We uh we kind of mocked this up for the battery portion. We got the uh box here on the front. And we're thinking, now keep in mind, this is temporary, >> [music] >> um but it's probably going to be semi-permanent. Um we like the way the batteries are aligned here.

[00:00:42]I'm going to throw, this is not the inverter I'm going to use for this, but this is the inverter I have and it's the inverter I'm going to use for now because I'm going to Dayton Hamvention in like, what is today? Today's Friday, I'm leaving Tuesday morning, so whatever that math works out to be.

[00:00:57]Uh leave a comment.

[00:00:58]>> [laughter] >> So, we're going to we're going to wire up the batteries for 120 volts so we can have AC and I need to drill a hole in the bottom of this box to run 12 volts inside the camper.

[00:01:14]And I think we think Right, Bill? We think >> We think.

[00:01:20]>> We think we're going to just drill right here um because it's basically just 2 by 4s underneath this.

[00:01:30]So, the center of the trailer is like right where this beam is. So, I'm just going to drill right through that and come up underneath and go up. And I've got a little fuse block thing that I'm probably [snorts] going to mount somewhere up here. I need to rewire this power pole um which I should have done differently in the first place, but it is what it is. But [snorts] then I won't have to use this battery and we'll just be good to go, and life will be good. So, let's make that happen.

[00:02:00]So, we're going to drill through one of these things, cuz that's depressed, like Bill just said.

[00:02:06]But I probably edited that part out.

[00:02:09]>> [laughter] >> So, those are higher underneath.

[00:02:13]That thing right there.

[00:02:16]It's permanent.

[00:02:19]Perfect. All right. Hand me that bigger uh drill bit, would you, that's on your box.

[00:02:24]I hate having to drill this big of a hole.

[00:02:29]Perfect.

[00:02:30]All right. That's a big hole.

[00:02:33]That is uh pretty much perfect. A little off-center, cuz I had to account for the great there for you OCD people. I know.

[00:02:40]Probably overkill, but better safe than sorry. I'm using I bought some uh 10-gauge pure oxygen-free copper wire from Amazon. This 25-ft roll was like 45 bucks or something, so we're going to run that in, and I guess now it's time to drill a hole in the trailer.

[00:02:58]Go right in the center and drill down is what Bill says.

[00:03:02]And hope that this drill bit is long enough to get through.

[00:03:05]>> It is.

[00:03:10]We're through. [snorts] Oh, yeah. I can I can see light.

[00:03:16]Did you see any wires down there while you were there?

[00:03:19]>> [snorts] >> I wasn't paying attention.

[00:03:23]Dead battery, though.

[00:03:26]Hold, please. Second verse, same as the first.

[00:03:31]There we are.

[00:03:36]It's in the hole.

[00:03:38]You want to be a lamb and feed that out?

[00:03:41]Boy, I couldn't have drilled that hole any perfectly. It is like right next to the frame there. Fantastic.

[00:03:47]Actually, there's a little thing right here.

[00:03:53]Go in the hole.

[00:03:56]We're in.

[00:03:59]We are in.

[00:04:01]We're in the the trailer. I got it in the hole, boys. There you go.

[00:04:06]I got it in the hole.

[00:04:08]So, the USB outlet that we just installed like a week ago has to come off so I can put I've got this breaker box here I'm going to mount right underneath.

[00:04:18]So, I got to take [music] this off and rewire it so I can make everything work. And then the wire is just going to go right up here and into the breaker or the fuse box, whatever you want to call it.

[00:04:30]And life will be good.

[00:04:32]1/8 of a turn at a time.

[00:04:37]Patient, grasshopper.

[00:04:39]Not my strongest suit.

[00:04:41]Hey, there's one.

[00:04:44]Hey, look. We got it.

[00:04:47]Something like that.

[00:04:50]Sure.

[00:04:51]Let's drill a pilot hole for one of the screws.

[00:04:57]It's very kind of them to provide mounting hardware for this.

[00:05:03]In the hole.

[00:05:14]I'm trying so hard to not over-tighten these.

[00:05:20]It's kind of just in my DNA though to do that.

[00:05:26]And that is how you drink a beer.

[00:05:27]>> to talking. I have it on one.

[00:05:31]All right. I'm going to leave it alone.

[00:05:33]There we are.

[00:05:35]Isn't it beautiful?

[00:05:44]You ever hear the one-armed, one-horned flying purple people eater song?

[00:05:49]Cuz that's stuck in my head now.

[00:05:51]It's Bill.

[00:05:52]Are you a flying purple people eater?

[00:05:55]No, but I did call myself the one-armed helper before, and that's probably where it jumps in your head. It could be.

[00:06:01]All right.

[00:06:02]Let's wire it up.

[00:06:03]Would it have made sense to connect these before I screwed this on? Yep.

[00:06:09]Would that have made for good content?

[00:06:11]No.

[00:06:18]Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Did we get it?

[00:06:20]Yep.

[00:06:27]Beautiful.

[00:06:29]Look at me, Mom. I'm wiring.

[00:06:33]All right. New leads are on the USB power pole thing, so I can just put some little ring terminals on there.

[00:06:41]So, uh got to remount it and wire it up.

[00:06:44]Do we remember which size it is? No.

[00:06:47]Yay, we get to do this again.

[00:06:59]And then Go in the hole.

[00:07:44]Now we get to wire it all up.

[00:07:50]The old 100 amp breaker on there.

[00:07:53]Again, this is temporary.

[00:07:55]So, don't at me too hard in the comments.

[00:07:58]And the plan is to cram a bunch of crap on top of this so it doesn't all go jostling around.

[00:08:09]That.

[00:08:11]And that.

[00:08:13]And that.

[00:08:41]And that's how she's going to get wired up.

[00:08:44]For now.

[00:08:47]Now it's safe.

[00:08:49]And to keep the batteries from jostling jostling around left and right, we're going to use a piece of wood >> [laughter] >> like that.

[00:09:00]And then we can utilize these guys in here.

[00:09:05]Right? Again, it's temporary, but it works.

[00:09:10]I can clamp this over somewhere else.

[00:09:16]Put that guy over.

[00:09:18]Store all the rest of these down here.

[00:09:24]And I've got a big outdoor blanket and stuff. I got all kinds of crap that I'm going to be putting on here.

[00:09:29]Again, temporarily, uh but I need this to travel. So, like this big blanket that I have can go here. Obviously, I have to take stuff out. Obviously, it's not ventilated well for the inverter. Um there's probably a lot of people [snorts] that are cringing uh in the as you're fastidiously typing away in the comments right now, but >> [snorts] >> that's uh that's all wired up. So, we got 12 V going in. Got to throw a fuse in there.

[00:09:53]Uh >> [snorts] >> and we should be good to go. So, let's see if anything blows up. Oh, you know what I should have did? So, this light's on cuz I'm an idiot. I'm going to rewire this red wire outside in the battery box um after the uh little breaker that I have so I can shut this off.

[00:10:14]But, that is that.

[00:10:17]And that's how that works.

[00:10:19]But, in the meantime, we officially have 12 V going into the trailer.

[00:10:26]And see if our power poles work. They do.

[00:10:31]And they do.

[00:10:33]And we have 13.25 V according to this really crappy meter. I believe that one better. Fan-fricking-tastic. [snorts] And now we can turn on our battery system.

[00:10:46]And theoretically our inverter's on, and it is. And then I can plug my extension cable in here.

[00:10:53]And now the air conditioner is on from battery power. We got 120 V here powering all my little puck lights. And we have 12 V all coming from the battery. That is freaking fantastic. And maybe one of these days I'll even plug in the uh TV and see what that does. I still got to do a few finishing touches. Like I feel a zip tie should go here.

[00:11:17]I need to get some of those wire holder things here so I can tidy this up and keep it nice and tight against the wall. And I'll probably get some spray foam or something to to fill in that uh hole so just stuff doesn't get in there.

[00:11:31]And I still need to install the solar charge controller, which will happen at some point this trip. I'm not worried about it. I just need AC uh like off-grid at a rest stop for 2 nights potentially cuz we're going to have 120 V at the campground. So, I really only need the batteries while I'm on the road, but I am freaking happy that I got this done.

[00:11:52]So far, so good. Everything's running good. The AC's on. The compressor's going. Each battery is putting out about 17 and 1/2 amps. And theoretically, I can get about 25 hours uh of run time out of this. So, I'm freaking happy.

[00:12:08]Now, I got to see if I can fit all this crap in.

[00:12:12]Why would you fit?

[00:12:48]That's awesome. Everything that I need to fit in this box fits in this box except for my stools. I got two of these that won't go in there, but plenty of other places to put that. We are done for the day. That's a wrap. Thanks so much for coming along on another journey as I make this teardrop trailer mine. I cannot wait to get it up to Dayton get to camping. The Hamfest is going to be awesome. Thanks so much for watching. My name is Mike K8MRD. We'll see you next time on Ham Radio Tube. 73.