I hardwired my new Webasto / IndelB TB31 to my leisure battery in my Beach last night. It more or less worked, but due to not following the "measure twice, cut once" maxim it's not yet quite right, but I thought I'd post it as work-in-progress anyway for your continued amusement ...
Intrigued by
@MattBW link to the German video for the magnetic connectors further up the thread I thought I'd fit a socket to the base of the passenger / nearside seat and get two plugs - one for the fridge & another to fit to my (older) CTEK I used to trickle charge my motorbike with, as an easy safe quick direct connection to the battery is always going to be handy. An extravagance though at £55
I also bought a CTEK lead from Amazon to connect the Magcode socket to the battery as it was fused, already had ring terminals on it & it was going to be good quality even though it was £4-odd. The leaflet that came with it describes a CTEK socket panel, so in hindsight that would probably have been a better idea.
"Any road up":
This is the cigar lighter lead that came with my fridge. The plug will be cut off & swapped for a Magcode plug:
This is the CTEK lead for connecting the Magcode socket to the leisure battery, so the 'CTEK' part is surplus & gets cut off. Ideally this should've been a bit longer, but it's usable as-is.
Back of Magcode socket with the connectors to be soldered onto the CTEK battery lead:
Inside of Magcode plug showing where the fridge lead connects to the terminals:
CTEK lead modified & ready to connect to Magcode socket:
Fridge lead modified & end swapped from cigar lighter plug to Magcode plug:
Rear protective panel from base of Beach passenger seat, now with added 29mm hole:
Magcode socket rear attached to seat base panel (this is the problem, too deep).
View in-situ - Magcode socket rear attached to seat base panel (this is the problem, too deep).
Socket & panel with passenger seat pushed all the way forward:
Learning points:
1/ Unfortunately the combined depth of the back of the Magcode socket, plus it's terminals, plus the push-on connectors attached to the back are a bit longer than I'd expected & it fouls the battery itself. My (lovingly soldered) terminals are splayed out a bit, so I'll have to find somewhere better for it to sit instead, but it's working fine and all intact-ish.
2/ The ideal spot for the socket would be in the B-pillar side panel above or below the existing 12v & 3-pin sockets, but I can't be *rsed taking the interior side of the van off again specially.
3/ I didn't take into account refitting the rubber cover for the battery, which means the lead needs to be a bit longer to follow the line of the battery down to the floor. For now I've got a sheet of very similar rubber in the cellar that I'll cut to shape & substitute temporarily.
4/ The Magcode system itself is brilliant, if a little overpriced, and really easy to click to connect, particularly out of the way & it snaps to itself brilliantly - I'd be very happy to use these again for regular on/off 12V connections. I took a video showing it repelling the plug unless it was the right way around & will try again to upload.
5/ I had some trouble initially getting power down the combined line to the fridge lead terminals until I took it all apart & refitted, and also reversed the polarity / swapped over connections inside the Magcode plug. It's now reading 12.725V (?) vs the 12.2V showing at the socket on my cheapo LED socket meter.
6/ Glad I chose a battery lead with a fuse in it, very useful to be able to pull it out to avoid sparks (
) whilst faffing around.
7/ If I were starting from scratch now I'd use a CTEK socket instead, assuming there's somewhere to fit it ref: #1 and one is also able to fit a corresponding CTEK plug to the end of the fridge lead. This looks great:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002OHXX60/?tag=vwcalifornia-21
PS: Many thanks to
@Max-Felix @James B 2016 @MattBW & others for their info in the thread above.
