

| Subject: | Re: Solar panels for your Vanagon |
| From: | Loren Busch |
| Date: | Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:44:43 -0700 |
Thanks for doing the comparison that I was to lazy to do. What got my attention was comparing Airizona with other sites I'd visited and the ease of selection and ordering. BTW, I placed an order with them over the weekend, got a notice of UPS shipping this morning, then a notice of cancellation of the UPS shipping. I emailed them, wonder what's going on.... As for local supplies, that's one place that virtually every vendor of everything is falling down on on the Internet. I try and try to find links at a vendors site that will take me to a list of local suppliers and they just aren't there. It gets even worse with some vendors that provide all kinds of info on their site but won't sell to you, send you to one or maybe two online vendors. I've even gone back to the phone book and making local calls to try to find stuff that I know has to be available over the counter right in my back yard (greater Seattle area has anything you want) but I can't find it. Example: I wanted some Sorbothane for mounting the Norcold I'm putting in. No way could I find a link to a local supplier, ended up buying from McMaster-Carr online. Someone locally lost out because I was not able to find a local link. On 6/19/07, vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com> wrote: > > On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Loren Busch wrote: > > As for the Anderson Power Connectors, the easiest to use online > > ordering for these itmes that I have found is here: > > http://store.solar-electric.com/anhicupoco.html > > This place appears to be packaging the connectors for you, which is > handy if you don't realize that normally the housings and contacts are > sold separately. If you understand what to order, you can get these > connectors a little cheaper - solar-electric.com will sell you one 50 A > two pole housing plus two contacts for $6.50, while at Del City, you can > get two housings and four contacts for the same price. Sometimes a > local electronic distributor (*NOT* Radio Shack) will carry Anderson > connectors as well, if you would rather deal with a local store. > > If you are using any kind of connector like this, where the pins and > housing are sold separately, it's usually a good idea to order a few > spare pins. That way if you screw up installing one of the pins, or > decide to re-wire something, you can just install a new pin rather than > replacing the whole connector. You can get installed pins out of an > Anderson connector with careful use of a small flat-blade screwdriver; > some other kinds of connectors have a removal tool that is usually cheap > and worth having. > > solar-electric.com does have a good link to an Anderson "how-to" article > at http://www.flyrc.com/articles/using_powerpole_1.shtml . > > Matt Roberds > >
Have something to add on this topic today? Revive this thread in the forum »