Conversion Wiring
I bought a couple 100 foot rolls of color coded stranded copper wire in 14ga and 12ga along with shorter lengths of 8ga and 4ga wire for the main battery connections. At this time, I had most of the interior of the van taken apart including the headliner, side panels, seats, and front flooring, so access to all the circuit routes were exposed.
Wire Selection
In my research, it became apparent that I should be paying close attention to my wire gauges so that amount of power necessary got to the consumer – and not incidentally – my van wouldn’t catch fire. I attempted to spec my wiring to match the anticipated draw from each circuit and also cross checked many other conversion blogs to make sure I wasn’t in some other ball-park. I believe that, in wiring, it’s good to be conservative (although not excessive) so, in general, I sized up a gauge when selecting wire for a circuit. I found a few online wire-gauge calculators and charts which helped immensely in this process. For appliances that had dedicated circuits such as fan, heater, and lights, it was easy to find the amperage draw by simply looking at the specifications that came with the appliance. For the DC outlets, I chose a fairly high amperage – 20 with the exception of the ones that I installed by the bed for phone charging which I kept at 10.
Pulling Wires
Following my design diagram, I began to pull wire along the factory harness routes from the battery location in the passenger seat base (photo) to the locations that I needed them. In the design I was careful to consider where my switches would go so that they would be convenient for use and also somewhat in line with the shortest route to the consumers (lights, outlets, etc…). I left plenty of extra wire at either end just to make my life easier when it came to hooking things up.
Wire Labeling
A super valuable tip I was given was to tag all my wires as I pulled them – after all, when they come together at the battery they ALL LOOK THE SAME! I purchase a circuit-labeling kit at my local hardware store for about $10 but any self-adhesive label or tape would work. I not only labeled the ends of the circuit but also key points along the way where wire exited hidden routes. I indexed the numbers to those in my diagram – it worked great!
Left to Right Wiring
Between the two fronts sees there is a hidden channel the runs below the floor that houses some factory wire-harnesses. I had read that there may be room in this channel for extra wiring. If so, this would be the main cross-van path for all my wiring.
In the passenger van (and some crew models) there is a heater duct that runs between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. I removed the flooring and then removed this duct to expose the wiring channel in the floor. It is just held in place by a few obvious bolts in the floor.
This is the plastic cover over the wiring channel that runs between the passenger and driver’s seats. It is held in place by clips that can be disengaged with a flat-head screwdriver allowing the cover to be opened to expose the factory wiring. (In this photo we’re looking towards the front of the van.)
After opening the plastic cover you can see the exposed channel and factory harnesses. Although it was tight, I was able to fit all my driver’s side circuits in there including the heater power harness and the 12v to 12v charging wires.
