Power Mad II

Ditched the idea of the Nissan Leaf power pack as too expensive and decided to simply go for two 110Ah leisure batteries - one under each seat - to replace the existing, single (and totally inadequate) 85Ah battery under the driver's seat.

Having the leisure batteries under the cab seats is, in my opinion, a major design flaw, as once in situ they're, to all intents and purposes, totally inaccessible without removing the seats. Even putting a Multimeter on the terminals is a process requiring the expertise of a contortionist in possession of tiny, Trump-sized hands.

Managed to remove the seats (which are extraordinarily heavy) without any issues and got a better look at the layout, which showed there is a channel under the floor that's designed for feeding battery cables between the seat spaces, but it was filled with foam rubber. I force-fed a length of 20mm poly piping through the gap to force an entry and act as a conduit, but had to split it lengthway in order to accommodate the three, heavy duty extension cables required to go through it.

Below is the driver seat arrangement.

And the passenger side with the end of the conduit just poking through.

Overview from the rear with one lead threaded.

Three cables? Yes - the two batteries have to be rigged in parallel to create one, huge 220Ah  battery and the connection to the 12v system has to span the whole rig, positive of one battery to negative of the other, else the battery replacing the original one battery rig would end up taking most of the load. That means three cables going to the extra battery under the passenger seat - a positive and negative for the parallel circuit and an extra negative to span the two batteries for the complete feed circuit to balance the load. The corresponding positive terminal on the battery under the driver's seat also requires two cables to be attached.

Batteries are ordered and I'm simply awaiting delivery before completing the rig. I also have my eyes out for a 1kW inverter and a suitable 200W solar panel for on-the road top-up. A self-steering one that tracks the sun's bearing and elevation when the engine is shut off would be ideal.