WHAT TOOLS DO I NEED TO PUT ELECTRICS INTO MY VAN?
We often get asked what tools we recommend to build offgrid power solutions in vans. Over the years of working with building electrical systems in vans/boats/cabins/overlanders, we've used a wide range of tools to build our solutions. A lot of these tools are not common tools that you can just buy in your average hardware store and unless you live in a big city that has specialist tool stores, it's likely that you'll be ordering the products off Amazon (or online) as we do regularly. We know what it's like buying tools from the internet - you find one that has good ratings, read the ratings and often take a punt and hope for the best. Sometimes it works out and other times it flops.
We decided that we would list some of our favourite electrical tools that we use when we build custom offgrid power solutions for the campervans and boats that we work on.
Ratchet Crimping Tool & Wire Stripper
This is a great set of tools for a van conversion! It’s really cost-effective and functionally rich! Being able to change the dies that are used so that you can crimp both insulated & non-insulated connectors with the same tool is very handy.
Also, these wire strippers are very effective for stripping wires of their insulation. You can easily strip wires without cutting the actual copper.
Ratchet Crimp Tool for non-insulated connectors
We tend to have a separate crimping tool for non-insulated connectors as it’s handy to be able to just pick the tool up to crimp your connectors rather than having to change the dies every time you need to crimp a different type of connector. These are really reliable crimping tools that we’ve used extensively on builds!
Hydraulic Crimping Tool
This is a great hydraulic crimping tool option for large gauge wire! We would recommend using a hand hydraulic crimping tool over one of the heavy-duty hand crimping tools as it will generally give a better crimp, provided that you size your wiring & connector lug correctly.
Wire Stripping Tool
This is the tool that we would recommend to strip the insulation off large gauge wire. It’s a much safer option than using a penknife or Stanley knife to strip the insulation off wire.
Crimping Hand Tool
One of the most important parts of your offgrid setup, if you're doing it yourself, is to make sure that your wires and connectors are all done really well and conducting well. You don't want any loose connections that will cause resistance to the current and potentially cause sparks or become a safety risk.
This is one of my favourite hand crimping tools that I've used a lot for a number of builds!
Cable Cutter
When I first started building electrical systems, I used to cut thick cables with hacksaws and all sorts of other tools that weren't the right tool for the job. Once I learnt a bit more and found out able cable cutters, my life was changed! If you're cutting anything more than about a 16mm2 or 6AWG, you need a wire cutter!
Power Supply
If you're building your own LiFePO4 battery for your offgrid power solution, then being able to balance your cells is VERY important. There are loads of options available for various power supplies, but this is the best one that I've found that I've used extensively.
Heat Gun
A good heat gun is a MUST HAVE for building the conductor wires for a good offgrid power solution. This is my favourite heat gun that I've used.
Heat Shrink
This is our favoruite heat shrink that we’ve used. We really like to use heat shrink that has adhesive inside as it glues everything together and adds more strength to the process.
Insulated Lug Connector
This is our favourite insulated lug connector. They have heat shrink insulation, which makes for a really neat and strong job compared to the traditional insulated connectors that don’t have heat shrink.
Insulated Butt Connectors
This is our favourite insulated butt connector. They have heat shrink insulation, which makes for a really neat and strong job compared to the traditional insulated connectors that don’t have heat shrink.
Insulated Spade Connector
This is our favourite insulated spade connector. They have heat shrink insulation, which makes for a really neat and strong job compared to the traditional insulated connectors that don’t have heat shrink.
Heavy Duty Copper Lug Connector
If you’re building out a van, you need to make sure that your battery connections are really good so that you get good conduction through the connections, avoid corrosion & don’t lose any power through the connections.
We always recommend using copper lugs, whether tinned or not to get the best connection. We also always use heat shrink to get the most out of the connection too.
Clamp Meter
A clamp meter is a very handy tool to add to your kit when building offgrid power solutions. This will enable you to check the current that is being drawn by your load or charged into your battery. This is one of the favourites that I've worked with.
Wirewound Resistor
We cover the topic of how to connect inverters to batteries in our Youtube, Tiktok & blog, but if you're setting up an offgrid power solution, this cheap tool could save you blowing some electrical equipment and save you a lot of heartache and money. Some inverters and BMS have capacitors built into them, which can blow by the arc that's created when you connect your battery (sometimes). Using a simple resister like this can allow you to charge up the capacitor and save your equipment from blowing by avoiding those arcs.
Grub Screws for building out LiFePO4 batteries
If you're building out a LiFePO4 battery, we'd highly recommend using Grub Screws instead of conventional bolts. It allows you to put a good torque onto your bus bars and cable terminals under the first nut and then put things like terminals going to your BMS and temp sensor terminals under a second nut that's not tightened as much. From our experience, this is a far better solution for building LiFePO4 batteries.
IF YOU FOUND THIS BLOG POST HELPFUL, YOU SHOULD CHECK THIS ONE OUT WITH SOME TIPS ON HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT INVERTER FOR YOUR VAN:
JOIN ALL THE OTHER ADVENTURE JUNKIES THAT ARE GETTING FREE OFFGRID ADVICE
GET FREE TIPS, TRICKS & HOW-TOS ON THE BEST WAYS TO GET OFFGRID POWER INSTALLED IN YOUR VAN, BOAT OR RIG, GET EXCLUSIVE ACCESS TO DISCOUNT CODES & BE THE FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT FUTURE OFFERS AND OTHER EXCITING THINGS THAT WE'RE PLANNING!