In 2021 I refined my 1966 8’ NCO Alaskan by adding a third 100 watt solar panel, rerouting the solar feed into the camper top shell, back-feeding 12 volts into the unused 120 volt AC light circuit, and installing a stronger reading light near my bed. Details follow.
A third 100 watt solar panel was kept loose to be able to place it in the sun when my truck was parked in the shade. But I never used it for that purpose, so moved the two existing 100 watt solar panels forward on the roof rack and added the third panel to the rear passenger side. This photo shows the revised wiring on the bottom of the panels.
The wiring from the solar panels had entered the camper through the unused furnace vent on the bottom half of the camper. When the camper top was raised I had to pull about 2 feet of wiring out of the vent, an annoyance. So I rerouted the solar panel wire into the top of the upper shell and left 2 feet of loose wiring on the inside of the camper so the top could be raised without pulling extra wire out of the bottom. A small Perko stainless steel clam shell ventilator (cat. #. 0315DP1CHR) covers the hole where the 10 gauge duplex solar wiring enters the top shell.
To provide more interior lighting, a fused 12 volt duplex wire was run up the rear interior and across to the 120 volt fuse box, where it was attached to the dead positive and negative 120 volt terminals. This fed 12 volts to the rear wall cone lamp and to the new 12 volt LED lamp above the dinette table, which has been lowered to serve as a bed. This 12 volt wire was taped to the solar duplex wire then both of them were placed inside a fabric cover, as done on current Alaskans. A 12 volt 7 watt LED lightbulb at 3000 Kelvin provides warm light from the rear wall cone lamp.
[continued in next post]
