My weekend Project | Alternative Energy | Forums

so after I had assembled all the parts, I set the battery in the bottom of the toolbox

I used some cardboard to help keep the battery from moving around

after looking at it and thinking how to lay everything out, I decided to center the battery in the box which also made it more stable

Once the battery was set, I put the tray in and messed around with placing the inverter, it fit into the tray well, but the sides blocked the outlets and the posts

so I took my blade and jig saw and cut out the sides

and set the inverter, the resulting gap was good for running the wires

I screwed down the terminals to the posts

and mounted the inverter

and ran a 12 volt connector from the batteries

I traced out the speakers and used my razor to cut out the holes

I picked up a cheap mounting kit and broke all the tabs off the bracket and traced out the opening

I used my utility knife and cut out the opening

and set the radio down into the bracket and set it the hole, I popped on the face plate for the radio and it locked the radio in place snugly

the only thing not waterproof is the speakers, but I can run a silicone bead around them to fix that

I wired up the power and the ground

and the speaker wire, making sure that the positive and negatives were correct

all wired up

and ready to fire up

oh yeah, here is the price break down

12v clip on adapter 5.02

400 w inverter 26.84

charge controller 34.95

tool box 60

radio 49.97

speakers 29.95

wire 8

dash kit 18

panels 75.38

battery 80

for a total of 388.11

compare that to the prices of the ones online that are 2000 dollars. My specs and theirs are very close except they have a single 45 watt panel I have 2 20 watt panels. They also have a 1500 watt inverter while mine is a 400, but it only costs another 80 dollars to upgrade to a 1500 watt inverter. If you take away the stereo and upgraded the inverter you would still be about the same price point though.