Building a chase vehicle..

[Brett Adair]

Well, since I saw Drummonds vehicles I decided that I have alot of work to do. I wanted to see if I could get any advice on what and how to install certain things within the vehicle. I have an '01 Mitsubishi Montero and I chase in it currently, but would like to deck it out like many others have done with there vehicles. I have the laptop, cell, 2 meter, GPS, TV, Inverter....etc. What else should I need?

 

[Bob Schafer]

Cup holders.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

 

[Brett Adair]

LMAO.....add those to my list. My biggest problem is that I am not an electrician or a real handy man, but I want to attempt to do some of this myself. Thing is...I wish I didn't love so far away from these professional installers such as Drummond. Anyway, I'll keep in mind the extra cup holders

 

[David Drummond]

Yeah that 12v electrical stuff can get complicated when you got a lot of stuff going on. What you guys don't usually see is the mess I go through to get it there. Believe it or not, I knew exactly what was going on in these pics. LOL I used to be ASE Certified in Automotive Electrical. That stuff comes naturally to me.

Needless to say, I go through a LOT of zip ties tidying everything up nice and neat before it's done.

 

[David Drummond]

Cup holders.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

I actually pulled the factory cup holder assembly out of the dash and engineered it in to the back of the console I made, so we could keep them.

 

[JF Massicotte]

Hi Brett

Automotive electrical is not too much complicated. However, if you have no experience with this you should keep it simple. The best thing to do would be to start with the most important little part you think you will need. If you believe it is 2 meter, then go with 2 meter...


I also have many plans for my chase car, and I'm doing it step by step. We chase with a laptop and it is the very first thing to come in our way in a chase, so fixing a permanent holder with touchescreen is my first priority. Only after that will I go with more equipment and so on.


Ask your friends if they know better about car electrical... almost everyone has a friend who knows much about cars.


I also suggest you look at some websites about how to build safe car electrical systems and so on....

I almost like being new to storm chasing... everyone can do it but those with no experience or knowledge that go for the wedge at night will probably fail.

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

Hey Brett. The only thing I have to chime in is.. Try a ChargeGaurd if you can get one. They are very nice. Basically what they do is regulate your energy.. They hook directly into your battery, and you hook all your equip up to them. The chargegaurd also can turn all your equipment off at a certain programmable amount of time. So your battery wont be run down. When you start your vehicle they automatically turn on! You can PM me if you want more info.

 

[Jay Cazel]

How about a light bar!!!! j/k


One tihng I was looking into was a second battery to run all the equiment with. Tyler Costantini and Chris Wilburn have this set up, that way the cars battery is just used to start the car, and if for some reason it dies you can switch over to the other battery to start the car. Then where you start the car the second battery will charge back up. Really a nice set up.

 

[Brett Adair]

Nice! Thanks for all of the info. I like the car battery idea as well as the charge guard. I was looking at David's photos and thinking, "No way in hell, I'll cross some wires and burn everything up!" I think I may actually try to do something along the lines of mounting all of the antennas and trying to find places to mount the equipment.....but let someone else do the wiring. That will probably be a pretty penny to pay someone else to do it, but I believe it would be my safest bet. The hardest thing may be attempting to build a customized weather station mount. I'm going to take some photos of the top of my car and the inside to give you guys a good idea of what I am dealing with.

 

[Jay McCoy]

I have a suggestion if you are going to get somebody else to do the wiring. Talk to your local sheriff and especially volunteer fire depts. They usually either have somebdoy or contract out to somebody who does this sort of setup regularly. I found one in Amarillo that takes care of the local sheriff and many small companies with their communications and lights. He has installed everything on my truck from the radios/scanners to all my emergency equipment like lightbar/siren/strobes/center console.. etc.. and I have never had any issues with my stuff. It does cost some but will be cheaper than a regular mechanic will charge thats for sure. It only took him less than 2 days to have all my lights and 6 types of radios and a LCD tv installed with all wiring hidden.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

If you do decide to use a 2nd battery to power on your equipment make sure that you mount it somewhere that's outside the vehicle and away from the occupants, perhaps under the hood if you can. I strongly discourage anyone from using a car battery inside the vehicle to power up equipment. It is very dangerous to the occupants to have the car battery inside the vehicle. Car batteries contain sulfuric acid which can release fumes that are very dangerous. Sulfuric acid is clear, colorless and odorless so you wouldn’t even know you’re breathing it. Sulfuric acid is also very corrosive and can be found in the air as small droplets or it can be attached to other small particles in the air.

When concentrated sulfuric acid is mixed with water the solution gets very hot, it can also catch fire or explode when it comes into contact with other chemicals and metals. There is also a risk of the battery exploding.

I don’t know the rest of the facts about the dangers of a car battery in an enclosed area, but I know that earlier this year I mentioned the idea of doing this to my dad who has been an automotive tech basically his whole life and to sum it up, he said I would have to be stupid to think that putting a battery inside a vehicle would be a idea thing and explained the dangers of doing it. He told me of a guy he knew that had a car battery inside the vehicle, one day it exploded while the guy was in there and caused the guy some pretty serious injuries.

Honestly, in my opinion a power inverter will work just fine. I've used a power inverted to power up my equipment since I started chasing in the 90's and I've never been in a situation where I've lost power, and I've certainly never found myself in a situation where having a car battery inside my vehicle would have saved the day.

Just food for thought.

 

[Steve Miller]

Myself and a few of the people I have helped on their vehicles use coax cable with shielding to run from the battery to a distribution block inside the cab. This almost totally cuts out whine you might normally get from your ignition.
Jeeps are especially bad about throwing off noise.
We run the center wire as hot although we have reversed it before with no difference in positive noise reduction ability.
Hope this helps.

 

[Brett Adair]

Okay....I have gotten with my guys at our EMA office and we are going to get this thing done with Allcomm and McCord. They are two companies that work on our 800 mhz systems along with our police vehicles within the county.

We are also looking into these guys for a wrapping solution.

http://www.adsonwheels.com/

I do notice that NBC 5 out of Dallas I believe has used them and wrapped there chase hummer. Picture below..

Okay....so if I were building this thing from the ground up (since I am basically having everything wired 12 volt now), what would you put in it. On the list already I have...

1. Laptop Mount
2. 2M ICOM V-8000 75 Watt
3. GPS Unit
4. Dual Band Antenna
5. Bluebox (Router Repeater) with external antennas
6. Cell Antennas
7. Mobile Internet
8. Light bar (pending) with strobe emergency lights in tail/parking.
9. External Weather Station (pending)
10. Laptop with appropriate software
11. First Aid Kit, Cooler, and amenities

Now, for the weather station would it be okay to go with a wireless one as long as I purchase a radiation shield for the thermo sensor? What else could I use?

 

[Steve Miller]

With all the external stuff plus wrapping, you need to add "Three chase buddies" to your list because every time you pull in to a hotel parking lot for the night you will be at risk of getting your vehicle broken in to. You will need these extra chasers to work in shifts overnight and watch your assets!

Serious though, I would up that ham to a dual bander just for frequency coverage purposes. My opinion...

 

[Chris Hayes]

The setup in our truck is very basic. We have a 2m ICOM ham radio, CB radio, laptop on the Jotto desk, and the GPS hooked up to the laptop.