 All right wires Right gonna need kind of a lot of wire because every solar panel has to have wire that goes down to the back and Minimum 12 gauge wire I think I'd rather have 10 gauge All right, I've got the mess of stuff I pulled off the boat Some of that I want to use but I'm gonna want to make this a pretty nice wiring job. So Also pulled out some this is 10 gauge and that's 10 gauge These are 12 I'll probably stick with the tens and then all under here This entire area under here is just wires anytime I come across Leftover wire that people are giving away or selling cheap I take it so I have a lot of wire And a lot of it is just like You know not that big pieces and stuff It's just a variety of all kinds of stuff Yeah, I didn't find any black 10 gauge wire However, red and white is fine. You just use white as the you know the the negative Which would normally be black and then the red be the positive. I Could just go With 12 gauge, I've got some really nice rolls of 12 gauge there and I did some quick calculations With 12 gauge wire I'll lose roughly half a volt between the solar panels and You know the the motor or the batteries wherever they're going well half a volt at the max like the furthest ones and With 12 with no 10 gauge wire, which is thicker. I'll lose Like 0.3 volts, so I'm not really losing that much either way I'm also going to give each solar panel its own blocking diode and I don't think those solar panels even really needed. They might even have blocking diodes kind of built into them Either way though, it's just an extra safety thing to make sure that Electricity doesn't go from one solar panel into another one because the electricity has got to come from the solar panel Into the motor, but if one solar panel is in the shade and another one that's connected with it Is in the Sun then the Sun one might push energy into the shaded one and could damage it So this will make sure that never happens. I need Six of these and I've got 12 so great These are one of those things I bought online Really cheap when they were surplus seven for like eight years six years. I don't know. I've had them for years though Okay, where are the wires even gonna go? These ones are sticking out Now they start right around where this pivot point is so basically the wires need to follow this arm and come down And basically just what they're doing right now Because that way as long as this as long as they're following where where these joints are The solar panels can move everywhere. They go and the wires will just bend here Go along there and then bend there and come inside And it looks like the solar panels have enough Length on their wires that I can just Maybe just drill a couple holes in here It'd be just on this side of this thing and they can come right inside and then I can do all connections in here Oh What do you think? Do you even know what I just said? I think I'm just gonna use these wires To come right inside and then I'll connect things to the wires after they're under here So that means I Just need to drill Two appropriate holes up here. Maybe I can put them over here a little bit. I don't know somewhere around here And just bring them in So I can do that tall six panels get all the wires coming inside and then Then next then out. So is there any problem with that? I think it'll be fine those wires coming out of the solar panels have really thick Plastic coating so I shouldn't have to worry about them rubbing against the you know, the edge of the hole and wearing through I want to make sure that where I put the holes and put the wires through they don't leak So that's a silicone around the wires around the hole. So that should be fine Hmm, I think those wires will be flexible enough to I mean, they don't have to do that much bending as long as I keep them a little bit loose above Yeah, I think I think that'll be fine All right, well, those are pretty easy to pull in Got all six done Now when I put the solar panels in I wasn't really paying attention to the orientation of the panels and if I was I would have put these two the same way because the wires come close to each other And those two are going to be connected to each other, but that back one The wires all the way at the back. I would have flipped it to this end and then this whole side I would have reversed them all so By not paying attention at all two out of six are in the orientation that I would prefer Although it doesn't really matter I'll just have to run my wires a little bit longer over here. It's not a big deal All right, I Think I still want to use this big Frankenstein switch Take it apart and clean it up a little but it's always been trusty never let me down. So I'm gonna keep using it just a You know like a big old old science class Kind of copper switch Just made out of copper pipes Got all the wires off it Man, that's a cool switch So the way it works is Got these two big copper things And it moves forward and it touches these two and that would be the low speed and then medium speed It touches the next connect contact and then full speed touches the last one and the way I had this set up previously was When this touched the first thing Some of the solar panels would connect to the motor when I touched the second one more of the solar panels Would connect to the motor and then when I connected full power that connected the batteries to the motor So that would be the maximum power I get out of the motor and then I Had some wires crisscross so that when this went into this position it reversed I'll probably keep reverse. It's useful to have reverse Right now everything looks really dirty Like corroded like this is all copper. All these are copper. So I think I'm gonna take these pieces off one at a time scrub them You know clean them off put it all back together and Then it should be nice and shiny and All right The contacts will be a lot better if they're clean Oh, that's looking pretty good. That looks good enough. Whoa. Now that is a big difference Maybe wondering how this got so corroded. Well, it got splashed with seawater Even though it was inside the boat in a pretty protected spot I was going through a storm and there was like ocean wave water coming in sideways It was pretty crazy. Anyway, it's got salt water all over it. Where are my nuts? Where are my nuts for this? Come on, where are my nuts go? That took hours Okay So the way this silly switch works I've got three speeds forward because these will touch here first And then we'll touch the next contacts and then the third contacts and Reverse is over here. I only have one speed and reverse And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna connect two solar panels Well, let me start with the motor first I'm gonna connect the motor positive and negative to here so that's gonna go to the motor so anything that That gets into this is gonna get to the motor and then I'm gonna connect two solar panels in Parallel to here the positive and negative of those two solar panels So when I go forward a little bit, it'll connect two solar panels And then I'll connect another two solar panels to these these connectors So if I get to there, I'll have four solar panels connected to the motor and then Well, I guess right now. I'll just connect the last two solar panels to that last one So that'll be six solar panels connected when I go full speed However at some points soon, I'm going to get Batteries and then the batteries will be connected here with whatever kind of speed control I have so Low speed connect to solar panels connect for solar panels and then connected batteries and when I'm connected to the batteries, I'll be able to go the fastest and The way I did this before with the reverse is I just made the reverse Connected to the batteries except it was you know the wires were crossed so that when you went this way the Voltage was reversed So we'll go go in reverse. So I had no reverse if I wasn't using the batteries However, the batteries always work, but the Sun only sometimes works. So I figured that would be good to use for the reverse So I guess that's probably how I'm gonna connect it again So right now I'll just connect these to the last two solar panels When I get the batteries the two solar panels connected here We'll charge the batteries that are then connected to here, but not directly connected I'll go through some kind of speed control thing All right, let's go take this Frankenstein switch outside See where it connects on the boat. I don't know where it's gonna go Here's the boat though Somewhere on the boat where I can reach it easily Love this boat is a good-looking boat It's gonna be even better when I had when it gets the paint job Okay, oh, you know what just happened yesterday something with seats. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get some really nice seats for this boat A Guy I forgot his name. No, I think it was Paul. I think it was Paul if it wasn't Paul. I'm sorry I think his name was Paul Anyway, the guy who watches my videos He saw that on my Amazon wishlist, which is you know always in the description of my videos had seats for the boat on it and He wrote the company that makes the seats that I had on there and asked them if he bought me one Would they send me a second one for free if I you know show it on video and then you asked me about I was like, yeah So I think I have two seats coming Which is amazing like like nice squishy seats comfortable seats like seats for like Like a tractor like squishy tractor seats not not like not like hard steel ones like like like squishy ones Very excited about that. Okay. Anyway, I'm gonna Basically sit right here ish and I want I want my switch to be somewhere Easily accessible. I can't be there. It's gonna get in the way of that Huh, you just put it right there except Wow, let me think about oh wait I could put it right there and then I could I could sit I could reach it from This side or from that side. Well, that might be the best idea ever Except I don't know if I want to attach it To the pedal thing because the whole pedal thing comes out. So maybe Maybe I'll have a thing that's attached here that comes up And attach it there Oh, that that is a great idea. Oh, totally. Yeah, I'm good. Oh, that's gonna be beautiful. Okay, so That means I'll be able to sit here Let's see where my pedals go. Yeah, sit right about here. You have to move over a bit you though Uh Everything sit here on my nice fancy tractor seats that are squishy. I can control my Thing right here do my pedals I'm a steering Oh, this this is beauty. I love it. Oh, this is gonna be great. This is gonna be so good All right, is that gonna be amazing or what? You don't don't fall in the water We're currently low tide and the boat is Just on the dirt so where pedals aren't even or the paddles aren't even in the water However with this with the weight of the solar panels up there and the weight of the motor now that Now the paddle wheel does work Because you know before I put the weight of that stuff on The boat was floating so high that the paddle wheel wasn't even hitting the water But now it's good. Anyway Yeah, that's gonna be good. Okay. I want to mount it right there I think that'll work. It'll that will extend the length Of some of the wires a little bit, but not even that bad actually Oh, yeah, that's some good stuff right there Reverse, forward reverse It's just riveted a couple times in here and then I just riveted it up here I know this whole pedal thing is removable And at some point I may want to have this not riveted to there But you know if that happens at some point in the future I can replace the rivets with a Bolt thing or something But I suspect it's going to stay just like this for quite some time. So I'm not going to worry about it for now Yeah That's great All right, I've got all the froms and the twos So now I just need to connect the wires From the solar panels to the switch From the switch to the motor And I want to put those blocking diodes in between the solar panels and the switch I think I'm not going to do that today though. It's almost four o'clock And I was just talking with my kids Um saying I feel like I I need to I need a bit of a rest I'm gonna have to take a day off and just chill out tomorrow. And then they were like, oh, let's play pirates So we'll see I don't know. There's so much stuff I want to do but I do I'm feeling a little bit Uh, a little bit worn out like I should take a rest and Then chill out for a day Or half a day. I don't know. We'll see Anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna call it a day today and Get clean and go make some dinner