nicknorman

Cavewoman then? But seriously, a van is a much smaller space and has less “stuff” than a modern narrowboat. I also have 100Ah in my caravan. Camper vans tend not to be parked up “off grid” for several days or weeks - they either get driven or are on a site with hookup - as a generalisation. On the boat we tend to use about 200Ah a day, although we are certainly not frugal.

Not sure where the £350 comes from. I have 600Ah which cost around £1800. I guess £350 might get you the cheapest 100Ah battery but that is only any use if you wished you had been born as a caveman. People who are looking at Li probably have electrical demands greater than one rusty candle and a sink foot pump for water.

I think Ian's point is that your "works fine" needs to be defined. Do you mean works fine right now. In that case, yes. Do you mean will still work fine after 10 years of long summer cruising days with batteries already fully charged by solar? Well we don't know that, but the suspicion is it probably won't. The difficuly with something with a projected life of well over 10 years, is that it takes a long time to discover that you have done something that in fact has reduced the expected life to half what it should be.

Because there are so many possible combinations of pulley sizes on engines and alternators, just about every tacho can be adjusted to suit the pulley ratio - it wouldn't be economical to manufacture different tachos to suit all these combinations.

It’s Pike. Oops, shouldn’t have said that.

Hello Tony. You are not very subtle!

Yes the heat position is for the glow plug heaters. Not all engines with glow plug heaters have a separate heat position though - eg some Listers have a timed relay such that the glow plugs come on automatically when the ignition is turned on, and go off when the timed relay opens, thus making it "transparent" to the user. On your first comment just be aware that if you do go for a generic panel, you need to be confident that the gauges match with the senders on the engine, either because they are directly compatible, or because the gauges are configurable.

Instrument panel gauges are not really specific to the engine they are attached to but they are specific to the senders that are attached to the engine for the oil pressure and coolant temperature. That said, the description does imply that this panel can be configured to suit a variety of senders. Ditto the tacho would have to be adjusted to match the pulley ratio and number of pole pairs on the alternator. So it would probably work, but it is hard to know the quality and robustness of the panel without seeing it in the flesh. And what about glow plug heaters, there doesn’t seem to be provision for that?

I think it’s a case of the excessive side force wearing the bearing which allows a bit of play which wears the seal. Not really a reversible process.

They've been around for quite a long time. Often referred to as LiPo. Used in most or all mobile phones, model flying things etc. Fairly unstable compared to LiFePO4 but not as bad as the cobalt ones.