Disclaimer: this is how I put this together, it is not intended as a guide, and is based on my limited personal experience. I am not an electrician, nor do I accept any personal liability for any accidents that may occur after reading this post. Always speak to a professional and be aware that electricity kills.
Well the second battery has been a constant source of pain throughout the trip. It seems to finally be resolved, however it’s been a long and exquisitely painful journey.
After arriving in Karijini I had some help from a friendly camper next to me with the cabling. It turned out he was a sparky, so I let him loose and didn’t check his work, after all I’m just a tinkerer. Turns out i should have watched this a bit more.
The Gibb River Road is pretty much non stop corrugations, which work electrical connections loose. Cue one dead battery. Pretty much every night I was having to borrow power from Brienne in order to keep my battery going. At the end of the road we stopped in Kununurra and I bought an Optima Yellow Top. I should have done this in the first place as you can run these until they have no charge, and then recharge them. The one I ended up going with wasn’t like this and ended up in the scrap heap after a week. A swap of the battery, check the solar works, and off again to Lake Argyle. Where the battery was dead once more.
More borrowed power and some checks on the cabling and rewiring late at night whilst most of the camp slept. Unfortunately we were in the middle of the campground. The next morning everything looks good, and it’s time to go to the Bungle Bungles, so off we go again, with an upgrade of an automatically powering on battery charger thanks to another cable run.
On arrival into the Bungle Bungles the battery is dead again. And I lose the last of my cool with this system.
Five minutes later and it’s a full rip apart of every connector, to find that the auto sensing cable has shorted, the cables connected in Karijini are not, and everything is essentially held together by electrical tape. A full rip apart of the system and re-connect of all the cables and everything is back on track. For about a day. The fuse that was in place between the RedArc and the battery kept blowing due to heat. Once back in Broome a trip to the local auto-electrical store and I had some different connectors to connect a midi fuse rather than the car stereo one. After changing this out and using cable ties to hold the system in the air I’ve not had a problem so far. Touch wood.