With a camping trip coming up it was the perfect excuse to get me the fridge I've always wanted. Another excuse is it's for our trips to Asian market over an hour away. Of course I made sure she get something shinny and expensive fist(that's another story) granted it was costly but the plan worked wonderfully with no words about the fridge from the CEO/CFO.
Now when I go camping I can't possibly run it off the cig lighter plug which is off when I remove the keys so direct power to rear of the 80 is on order!
Here are the parts I used:
8 gauge amp power kit
Blue sea 6 connection fuse box with negative
Blue sea cig sockets
Here is what I did:
1. The reason I ordered the amp kit is because it is cheaper and easier to find then just plain 8 gauge cables and comes with connectors and main fuse! It also came with a firewall gourmet which made it look professional. So I ran the power cable from battery through firewall(my LX had an unused firewall plug) cross/under the console, through the square factory cable conduit under the door trims. Then through the holes i drilled on the bottom of that little storage box on the passenger side rear panel. The main 50A fuse is installed about 12 inches from the battery. The kit came with 18ft of cable and I came darn close to using every bit of it. Wish I order a kit with 20ft power cable. The negative is bolted to the third row seat seat belt anchor.
2. Mounted the blue sea fuse box inside the storage box to be out of the way and easily accessible/visible, it really is the perfect place for it.
3. Drilled 3 holes on the bottom for power cables, 1 positive, one negative and 1 for the accessory cables.
4. Drilled 2 larger holes for the blue sea power socket, I happened to have a small keyhole drill bit I used to drill hole on my sink for water filter.
After some minor mistakes and wasted time looking for things I dropped/misplaced I was finally done, fridge plugged in and compressor is humming along chilling couple bottles of water. I now have another power socket for anything else needed constant power, right now it is connect to a power meter. And I still got 4 more fused connections left on the fuse block. Granted it is a complete over kill but hey it's a hobby.
Couple of lessons learned that can definitely make things better and faster if anyone else tries to do the same thing:
1. Order the amp kit with 20ft of power cable, it came close so I didn't leave enough slack at the firewall. Now it is a bit harder to adjust how I ran cable in the engine compartment.
2. I bought solid core accessory power cables, I figure it has more copper and can carry more current. Well turns out same gauge wire carry the same amount of current and solid core cable is pain in the ass to work with and just about impossible to crimp a connector to! Stranded power cable is the only way to go, I might just rip it out and replace with stranded cables later once I source the right cables, but is is working now. Tomorrow when I find some double sided tape I will stick the voltage meter on the fuse box cover and wire it to one of the fused connection so I ave constant voltage reading. I think it is cool but for the most part useless. Haha
Here is what is looks like without the cover:
![IMG_2189[1].jpg](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg' width='800' height='600' viewBox%3D'0 0 800 600'%2F%3E "IMG_2189[1].jpg")
Now when I go camping I can't possibly run it off the cig lighter plug which is off when I remove the keys so direct power to rear of the 80 is on order!
Here are the parts I used:
8 gauge amp power kit
Blue sea 6 connection fuse box with negative
Blue sea cig sockets
Here is what I did:
1. The reason I ordered the amp kit is because it is cheaper and easier to find then just plain 8 gauge cables and comes with connectors and main fuse! It also came with a firewall gourmet which made it look professional. So I ran the power cable from battery through firewall(my LX had an unused firewall plug) cross/under the console, through the square factory cable conduit under the door trims. Then through the holes i drilled on the bottom of that little storage box on the passenger side rear panel. The main 50A fuse is installed about 12 inches from the battery. The kit came with 18ft of cable and I came darn close to using every bit of it. Wish I order a kit with 20ft power cable. The negative is bolted to the third row seat seat belt anchor.
2. Mounted the blue sea fuse box inside the storage box to be out of the way and easily accessible/visible, it really is the perfect place for it.
3. Drilled 3 holes on the bottom for power cables, 1 positive, one negative and 1 for the accessory cables.
4. Drilled 2 larger holes for the blue sea power socket, I happened to have a small keyhole drill bit I used to drill hole on my sink for water filter.
After some minor mistakes and wasted time looking for things I dropped/misplaced I was finally done, fridge plugged in and compressor is humming along chilling couple bottles of water. I now have another power socket for anything else needed constant power, right now it is connect to a power meter. And I still got 4 more fused connections left on the fuse block. Granted it is a complete over kill but hey it's a hobby.
Couple of lessons learned that can definitely make things better and faster if anyone else tries to do the same thing:
1. Order the amp kit with 20ft of power cable, it came close so I didn't leave enough slack at the firewall. Now it is a bit harder to adjust how I ran cable in the engine compartment.
2. I bought solid core accessory power cables, I figure it has more copper and can carry more current. Well turns out same gauge wire carry the same amount of current and solid core cable is pain in the ass to work with and just about impossible to crimp a connector to! Stranded power cable is the only way to go, I might just rip it out and replace with stranded cables later once I source the right cables, but is is working now. Tomorrow when I find some double sided tape I will stick the voltage meter on the fuse box cover and wire it to one of the fused connection so I ave constant voltage reading. I think it is cool but for the most part useless. Haha
Here is what is looks like without the cover:
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