Snoozy Mods Phase 1

[MCDenny]

Hi all. I had a thread a couple of months ago about my plans for our Lil Snoozy. We got the new rig home about 3 weeks ago and I wanted to show the first phase of our plan to personalize the trailer for our specific needs.

We got the trailer without a mattress, sofa, battery or charger. Phase one was to upgrade the electrical system to give the ability to run the fridge for at least 24 hours on battery power and recharge the battery with less than half a day of generator run-time. I installed a Samlex 600 watt true sine wave inverter, an Iota 30 amp battery charger, a Victron Battery monitor and a DPDT switch to feed the fridge outlet plus another duplex outlet with either inverter power or shore power.

I also built a tongue box to house two Trojan T105 6v batteries, a Honda EU2000i generator and the 30 amp shore power cord plus hoses and a little miscellaneous junk.

Tongue weight with the new box and batteries is 240 pounds; it's 270 with the generator added.

Here's a top view of the new tongue box:


It's made from 3/8 marine mahogany plywood with a 5/8 doubler under the batteries.

It is just high enough to cover the batteries, which are pushed to the rear as far as possible to minimize tongue weight of the 124 pounds of lead. It's not too obtrusive from the side view:



A close-up of where the batteries go:



continued...

[MCDenny]

Here's a pic with the batteries installed:



The hold down method is 1/2" poly braid rope made tight with a turn-buckle between the batteries.

I couldn't resist posting the pic of Luke, my 17 month old grand son, riding in the box.



Another battery picture showing the shore power cord laying in the tongue box. Moving it frees up a good bit of volume under the bed where the factory builds in a sizable box to store the cord.



You really can't see in but there is a 100 amp circuit breaker next to the battery on your right. A fuse or cb is needed for safety and a resettable cb gives me a way of totally disconnecting the battery power from the trailer.

Here is a pic of the generator platform:



It just sits on the 3" square tongue tube. It and the generator are held down by a strap going through the two U bolts.



I'm going to make two canvas (actually Sunbrella) covers, one for when we leave the generator home and one for when we take it.

Lastly, here's a picture of the tongue weight measurement method:


I have a fish scale that goes to 325 lbs hanging from a sturdy step ladder. TW is 240# with just the batteries and 270# with the generator too.

continued...

[Mike Magee]

Very nice work! Neat idea with the fish scale, too... I never thought about those scales reading that high.

[MCDenny]

Here a few interior pictures showing the inverter and charger under the forward bed that has been reframed to reduce the width from 60" to 36". The water pump had to be moved forward to keep it under the bed.





You can see the shunt for the Victron meter on the right. The black curled cord is for the remote switch for the inverter, the grey cord leading off to the left is the data cable for the battery meter. The orange cord is the inverter output, the duplex box on the right is shore power for the battery charger.

We had a Fantastic fan added to the rear wall of the bath. The factory wired this to the bathroom light so it only worked when the light was on. Not a good solution for running the fan at night. I added a switch on the wall behind the light to give independent control of the fan and light:



The light switch was originally under the master electrical panel. I modified the plastic trim piece to take the DPDT switch that switches the fridge and another duplex outlet from inverter power to shore power:



On to interior trim next.

[cpaharley2008]

nice work

[Kevin K]

Very clever

[MCDenny]

Finally got the Sunbrella cover made for the toungue box.



There is an extra snap so the cover can be held up:



Also got the front cabinet finished and the bed flat installed. The old oak ply wall fit just fine moved forward to define the new bed:



The sliding doors are mirrors. $5 for a 12 x 48 mirror at Kmart that the hardware store cut to the exact 10 x 16 size I needed. Easy to sand a rounded edge on the glass and glue handles on with silicone.

There are tupperware bins inside:



That pop right out to permit access to the space underneath: