Video Transcript for How to Set Up Your Velit 2000R RV AC - 2021 Ram ProMaster 2500

Hey, neighbors. Kevin here with etrailer, and today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Velit 12 Volt Rooftop AC Unit here on our 2021 Ram ProMaster 2500. If you're working on your camper van build and you need a solution that's not gonna require you to have shore power or generator power, then the Velit AC unit that we have today, that's just gonna run off of our house batteries, is gonna give you a much cooler camping experience. This unit has a 8,000 BTU rating, and it's gonna follow that typical 14 by 14 pattern. When we get to the cutout hole that we're gonna need to make, as far as the rooftop unit is concerned, it's gonna be pretty much the same low profile look that you're seeing with a lot of the standard RV AC units. So there's not really that huge of a difference here.

We're just at a much lower power draw. Now with that being said, I would recommend that you have probably three to 400 amp hours for your battery bank, just because even though it is a step down from that one 20 draw that you have from those typical RV AC units, this is still going to pull quite a bit of power. So you don't want to end up, you know, completely draining your house battery, and then you don't have your lights and everything else running with you. With that, I would probably also look into some other kind of recharging situation. So whether that is going to be that generator, if you do end up having to hook up to that.

But mostly it's gonna be solar panels up on the roof, which is pretty typical when you're doing a camper van build. So you are gonna lose out on some space, because you're gonna need to have that panel system up there to replenish the power for the battery so that we can keep this running. But in the long run, that's gonna make you more self-sustainable so that you can go out on those longer trips and be out where there isn't shore power, so you can really enjoy nature. So this unit is gonna have a control panel right up on it so that you can do everything right here. But if so, like with our neighbor who's gonna be using this van, they're gonna have their bed at the back of the van.

If they don't want to get up in the middle of the night to change the settings on here, they also have a nice remote to go through it as well. Now there are some extra buttons on this remote because they also offer heaters. If you had that installed as well, this would also allow you to communicate with it 'cause there's a heat mode and there's a few other settings that are gonna go along with it. Now for our cooling side of this, the only thing that's really gonna be important is this section right here. We have our on off, so we can turn on the unit, turn it off.

This section's gonna have our fan speed, and you would just keep hitting that. So there's a plus or minus kind of on the fan side when you're looking at the actual unit itself. This one, you would just hit this, and it would cycle through those fan speeds. Up and down is going to be our temperature. So let me put that up. It's gonna raise our temperature up. Eco mode. So if you want to go into that lower power draw mode, you press that button right there. If you want to just cycle through the different modes, mode button's over here. We have our cooling mode. This button's not gonna be used, and pretty much the rest of these besides turbo and the sleep mode are the only other ones that are gonna be used, just because we don't have that heat function. But this is gonna give you an easy way to see exactly what you're at, change things without having to get up, and just make your life a whole lot more convenient. So one of the other big concerns when it comes to an AC unit is how much sound is it gonna make. Right now, I have it on full fan mode and on turbo mode. So it's fully up at its max output here, and I'm not even having to yell. I could easily have a conversation at a normal level. So I'm not getting that huge rush of air through here that's completely deafening out the whole van, which is gonna be super nice because this is a much more enclosed space than your typical trailer would be. Outside as well, we can get a quick sound of that too so you can kind of get an eye for what it's gonna be like for the campers that are moving beside you, or maybe if you're trying to not make as much of a impact on the nature you're gonna be around and disturbing other kind of animals that might be near you, we can get a good idea of what we're gonna sound like. So right now on turbo mode, I turned it down a little bit more just to really have it kick up. So you can hear it went up and then now it just dropped back down. Honestly, even at that sound, it's pretty close or on par with just the vehicle running. So the noise that you'd have with the engine cycling. So honestly not too bad compared to most of the other AC units out on the market. So as far as installation goes, this one is pretty standard when it comes to your typical AC units for RVs. This one is just a little bit more buttoned up because there's not as much stuff to do here. Now typically, when you're mounting up a AC unit, you are slapping in the rooftop unit, and then you'll have an air distribution box on the inside with some bolts that you're gonna clamp that chew together with, and that's what holds that down to your roof. Now with this one, the air distribution box is built right into the unit itself. It's gonna be a little bit smaller, so it's gonna drop into that 14 by 14 hole, and then it has a trim ring that's gonna take up that excess space there. So since it doesn't have that air distribution box, and instead it is going to have some support beams that are gonna run across, and it's gonna have holes in that that you'll run the threaded rods up through to clamp it down to the roof. Now depending on the application, there's gonna be a few different things that you're gonna need to do here. One of 'em is gonna be the sealant, so we wanna make sure that we're putting sealant down around that 14 by 14 hole. That way it's butting up with our roof gasket that we have on here that you'll have to put on yourself as well. And for that, at least for our application, since this is an automobile, we are using Sikaflex 221. Now, if you we inchesre using this in a different setup, maybe you have a different roof material that you're connecting to, then you might have to change that out for a different style sealant. Along with that, you also wanna make sure that there's enough framing. So our roof had enough in it for me to tie into and clamp down on, but your roof might not. You might have to build out some supports. And typically we'll see this with like an enclosed trailer. What we'll do is if there's no cross beams that we can tie into, we'll make our own cross beams, tying into the side like corner frame rail that we have, and then running another two beams between those two so that we're matching right up with that 14 by 14 hole. So overall super easy install. They make it super simple with the wiring harness as well, 'cause they already have it all buttoned up, ready to go for you. You literally just plug in with those Anderson connectors right at the unit. And then the other side of that a harness is gonna be some ring terminals for both your power and ground. So they've really done it in a way that you can do this at home. The only problem would be just do you have tall enough ladders to get up onto your vehicle, and do you have a buddy with you to help lift it up. Because this is a little bit heavy, it says it's right around 66 pounds. So I was able to lift this up myself, but when we got this up on here we we inchesre using a forklift, just to make it a whole lot easier for us. So in your case it might be a little bit different. You might have to have a couple guys lug this up onto the roof. So that's probably gonna be your hardest part. So if you don't have the extra ladders and friends to help you lift this up and get it in place, or you just don't wanna do it yourself 'cause you don't have the time, please feel free to reach out and use our dealer locator. You can enter in your zip code and get a shop near you to professionally install it. Now if you're doing this yourself, stick around and I'll show you how we did. So starting off our install, we're gonna be cutting a hole in the roof of our camper van here. And we needed to find the center of our opening here, because the ceiling was already precut by the company that put this in. So unfortunately they didn't make this 14 by 14. This is 14 and a quarter by 14 and three quarters, so it's a little bit off. So you'll see I already have some tape. I did this three different ways, so I wanted to make sure I was getting it perfect. So that way, when we drop in our AC unit, it's gonna fit the first time. So what I did was I measured across, measured across, and tried to get that as close as I could. That's why I got some pencil up here. And then I also took some tape and I ran that edge of the tape from the very center of the corner to the center of this corner. And then same thing from here to here, and where those lines meet also was showing up right where I had some pencil marks. So the next thing I did was I already have a template where I cut this out, it's 14 by 14, and I drilled a hole through the center of it with a three inch drill bit. This is what I've used before. I used it at the back of the van with a roof vent. So it makes it a lot easier if you have one of these. 'cause what we're gonna do is drill up in there, and when I was putting this up in here, I also just matched that up with that hole, made sure that my board wasn't going to be hidden by the ceiling here, just as a third way to double check this. So from that point, now we have a spot that we need to drill through. So I'm gonna be going to the center of what I drew here. We use our punch so that we won't have our drill bit walking on us. And then I'm gonna use a three inch drill bit, and we'll go through the ceiling to make a hole. And then once we have that hole, we'll go up on the top. And I'll use that, drill it again, I'm gonna put it through my template, match it up with the hole that we have, and then draw around the template so that I can see where we need to cut out. (drill whirls) All right, now we can go up top, and we'll mark it out with our template. All right, so I have my drill bit through the hole, so that way we know we have this sitting right where we want it. And now the next part is going to be making sure that this is actually sitting straight here. So we'll find a reference point. I'm using this line right here where they have a pinch weld. And coming back, I'm sitting right at six and seven eighths on this, or sorry, five and seven eighths on this side. And another five and seven ace on this side. So I know I got this perfectly straight, so we can mark it out. I'm just gonna use a permanent marker. I'm gonna pull it out. We've got our mark. And now we're gonna come at this with an angle grinder. I'm gonna get 99% of it. I'll leave the corners because I'm gonna switch over to my multi-tool. I've got a blade on that. That's gonna be a lot better for getting into these corners without going too far over, just because of the design of the cutting wheel on this. So I'll start cutting. (cutter whirls) (cutter whirls continue) All right, now that we have this all cut out, we'll come back with our file and just clean off any burs that we have here. So I've wiped this down after filing it with some alcohol and cleaned up the surface here, 'cause we are gonna be putting some sealant over this. Now typically, when it comes to an RV air conditioner, we're not putting any seal sealant down, it's just gonna be that foam gasket. But in this case they do recommend some sealant. It's gonna be Sikaflex 221, and that's the automotive grade that they recommend. So you'll wanna pick up some of that separately. And then with this right now, I'm just coating the edge that we cut. So that fresh, clean metal right there. We're gonna just give it a little bit of paint to help protect it, just in case if any for any reason, any water got through here, we wouldn't have it rusting out. All right, so we've got our paint on our cut edge here now, so that that way that's covered. So like I was saying, you are gonna need to use sealant, but at the same time you also have to put on your gasket. So I think the easiest way to do this is realistically just gonna be lifting the unit up like I have now. There is refrigerant in this though, so we don't want to turn this on right away. We wanna let that sit because I am tilting this, so it's not really good for it. At least let it sit for like a day. Same thing you would if you took a residential fridge home and you had it sitting, laying down in your bed of your truck or something like that. You'd wanna let it sit before you powered it back on just for that refrigerant to settle. So in our case, we're gonna be letting it sit over the weekend before we come back and finish up the inside. So I'm not too worried about lifting it up right now like this. But we'll go ahead, we'll put on our gasket, I'm gonna do the side that has the tape on it, so we'll peel up our backing on that. And then on the roof itself, that's where I'm gonna put my sealant. So I'm gonna run that out. It's about an inch, so I just need to stay within that around the hole and we should be good. All right, now you wanna work this around the wiring. And while we're doing this, we wanna make sure that we're not covering up our mounting holes. So there's four little posts that are inside of here that are slightly sticking up just past that. That's what we're shooting for. We're gonna be having those right in our corner when we stick this on. And then I'm gonna tuck that up just a bit so it's not in our way when we go put this in. So from there, now I can lay this down, and I'm gonna slide it into place on here after I get that sealant. All right, and now I'm just gonna put a nice glob of this, run it all along here. Now this unit's not too heavy, but all the weight's right here at the front and it's just kind of awkward. So this would honestly be better if you had an extra set of hands. All right, now also included in your kit, there's gonna be these foam blocks. And what these are gonna do is help stabilize it, because you can see right now, we got a little bit of a gap here at the back. So what I could do is stick these in here. These you're gonna have a sticky side on it so you just peel back that backing. And I'm gonna stick these in the rib portion so that lower portion right here on the rib roof. And we will use that to help stabilize our unit. I'll probably put one at the front corners, and then also on these back corners, especially 'cause it just kind of really works out nice with the ribs in the roof. So I'll get those set, and then I'll redo 'em with the sticky set off. So we have a wiring harness that's gonna have this Anderson plug on it on one end, and the other end's gonna have two ring terminals, which we can show you right here. So here's the other end of it. I've already snaked this through everything here, just 'cause it's a big hassle trying to pull all these walls down and get into the wall here. So obviously, the application's gonna be different, depending on what vehicle you're putting this in. So that's kind of a waste of your time to see all that. But we are snaked across our ceiling, down through the wall, and then down through this shaft here in the side. And we're gonna have a positive and negative. On your negative side, you can ground that to the chassis. And on the positive side, you're gonna have a built-in fuse holder and fuse already in place. And that is gonna run over to our battery, which I'll also have to snake down a little bit more. And that's gonna come into this box where we have everything wired up. But with all that said, now we can connect our Anderson plug up at the top. And I'm gonna push this back up into the ceiling, because the next step's gonna be putting in our trim ring. It's a little tight here. Let me see what we got going on. I have to pull more of the harness through the wall just to get this lined up right. All right, I got the Anderson plug together. Now I just gotta force our harness back into place, 'cause this is a pretty tight fit with the roof, how it is right now. So I'm gonna struggle with that for a little bit. And then once we have that in place, we'll have our trim ring. So the garnish right here is gonna go up on there. Unfortunately, the ceiling was cut and it was cut a little bit too large for the hole here by whoever did the roofing. So I also made a little trim ring to go around that. And all I did was measure out how big of a space I needed to cover. And then I just took the measurements for the inner portion of this trim ring to cut out this section. Hit it with some black paint, couple of coats, seeing these in between, and then some clear coat as well. And that's gonna slap up on there, and give us something to screw in, just because right now the mounting holes for the trim ring don't really match up with anything, they're just gonna be going straight into nothing. So that's gonna give that something to screw to. So next we'll have a brace, and what this is gonna do is clamp the rooftop unit down to the roof itself. So we're gonna have two sets of threaded bolts. So these guys, so depending on the roof thickness that you're going through, you can use either one. And if you need to, you could still cut some down too if maybe these we inchesre a little bit too long. We're gonna be going with the shorter ones, because this faux roof right here has nothing behind it. It's kind of just held in in certain spots. And if I clamp to this, there's a good chance that it's just gonna bend and we can end up breaking something, or just not getting a tight enough grip to the roof, which isn't good for our rooftop unit. So first thing we're gonna do, just because they don't have much room is slide this up into the ceiling cavity here we have. That way I have it in there but not in the way, 'cause getting it in once we have these threaded rods can be a bit of a pain. Get that lined up. And on the supports, there's a slot in it but these will slip through, and then go into our mounting holes on the rooftop unit itself. Okay, let me get this one where we can actually see. (screw clicks) Okay, so we have two different sets of screws. So they have no head on 'em. So you'll have to thread that in first. And then after that, once you have that support beam in place, you'll want to take a flat washer and a lock nut and you're gonna thread that on. And that's what I have already done on this front side here. Now with the two, I had to go with the shorter ones, just because we don't really have a huge ceiling here. Now if this was like a fifth wheel or something like that where you've got more space there, obviously you're gonna need something a little bit bigger, so luckily they give you that. If you need to, you can always cut some of this off if the threads end up being a bit too much for it. But with all that said, I'm gonna get the support beam in place, and then we will tighten it down and then also torque it as well. So I've got this torqued, but it is an insanely low one. It's actually a little bit lower than what the lowest setting is on our torque wrench. So what I was doing is just watching it, so as it starts to build up you'll see it still, even though it is lower than what the setting I have it on is. But you know, just be careful. You wanna get it tight and snug so it's supporting that AC unit and it's not gonna be flapping around the wind here, or you know, potentially fall off your vehicle. But I think we've got it pretty well tightened down. And now our next step is gonna be filling in this gap with the trim ring. So I need to get this mounted up. So I'll need to drill some holes, and I'm gonna try and do it so that they're hidden behind the other trim ring that we have right there. It's gonna go in place. So probably shoot one on this side and this side, and have to see where our roof, it's way out here. So I'll probably figure out something else to do so I can keep as minimal screws showing as possible. (drill whirls) So I'm gonna pre-drill my holes as well, so that way when I shoot my screws through, it's not gonna split the wood. (drill whirls) I'm doing it close to the corner, and I'm just about an inch in. So that way it is hitting the wood ceiling but also not gonna be in the way of the trim rings screws. Screw it to my ceiling, And before I get too far I am gonna have to drill these out. So I'm making my mark with this, running the screw into it. And then I can drill it and put the screws back in. (drill whirls) All right, now I can see my screw hole, I can drill that out a little bit. We're using a much smaller drill bit than what our screw thickness is. (drill whirls) (drill whirls continue) (drill whirls continue) (drill whirls continue) Do that one a bit more. And we can grab a trim ring. All right, we're a little snug. I got this trim ring a little tight, but we are getting there. Got it in. There we go. And in your kit there's gonna be some black screws with a flat head, and that is what it's going to hold up our rooftop unit into the trim ring here. So I'm also gonna have to drill some holes for that to go in. So with that in place, I'll drill my hole up now, and then we will thread in our bolts but I'll need to get a little bit larger of a bit. (drill whirls) So I just drilled those out with an eighth inch drill bit. I'm going into wood so it's a little bit more pliable, especially 'cause this is just plywood that we painted. So even though this doesn't have a head, it is able to start threading itself in. You might find you need to use something else just depending on what material your roof is made of. (drill whirls) And just be careful once you start getting real close, you don't want to go too far and smash your plastic trim piece here. (drill whirls) All right, now that we have everything over here all in place, mounted, screwed down, torque down and all of that, the last step is gonna be hooking up to power. But like I said, since we lifted that unit and we had the refrigerant kind of moving around in there, we wanna let that settle back into place correctly. So we are gonna wait, 'cause it's Friday right now. So next Monday we'll come back, and we'll finish it up and show you how to do it. All right, now it's Monday, we're ready to hook up to power and ground. I've got my ground all ready to go. We're going right to the chassis here, but this is a tight space. So I'm gonna use a few adapters to get in here. All right, that one I tried putting a little bit more pressure. We're still not really getting it tight, so I don't want to use that hole. We're just gonna drill a new one. (drill whirls) Make sure we got it nice and tight. We don't want any of this wiggling. And now we can connect to power as well. I've already heard our unit click on. All right, we have our unit running out and it now it's blowing out cold air. Probably took two, three minutes for it to really start to fully kick on here. I think it has a slower startup, so you're not drawing this huge amount of amps right all at once, so that way it's not putting such a toll on your battery. But since we do have this app for our battery, we can see right now it's pulling 32 amps. Now we do have other things running besides just the AC unit, so that could be a little bit skewed, but for the most part, right around where we were expecting it to be, you can clearly see here we've got some little strips of paper here. So you can see that the air's actually blowing. This is gonna have those four vents, you can close 'em up as you need. So if you we inchesre wanting more pressure out of certain vents, whichever way you wanted to turn 'em, 'cause these do swivel. So let's say we have this running while we're driving, we want to cool off the front. We can force it that way and then we could close the other one so that more air is forced through the open vents. Put that back. This has got a few different modes here too. So we've got our on/off button. We've got our fan speed. So the one where it's showing lines, you know, spinning, that's showing that we're gonna be putting our fan speed up, which will be indicated here on our screen as well. And this one is for lowering our speed. Over here we have a plus and minus, and that's gonna be our temperature. And then we also have an M for mode. And there's a few different modes. So right now we're on cool. There's an eco mode, so it'll pull less power. Now obviously, with that, you're gonna get less cool just because it's not using as much power to refrigerate the air. There's night mode, which will use less power and it will gradually adjust itself. So that way you're not drawing as much late at night. It's gonna start amping itself back up temperature-wise. That way you're not using as much energy. And then there's this with a strong man symbol, and that's gonna be your high power mode so that you're pumping out more air and quickly cooling down the camper, and then just kind of stand by. So if you're just wanting to run the fan but you don't want to run the AC as well, just so you can get that air flow without pulling as much power, this is the mode you're gonna want to be on. And that's telling you what our temperature's at right now. Well, I think that does it for our look at and installation of the Velit 12 Volt Rooftop AC Unit here on our 2021 RAM ProMaster 2500. My name's Kevin, and if you're still looking for the right AC unit for your camper van build, please feel free to reach out to us via our Ask the Experts link, a comment on this video, or a phone call to our customer service department, and we'd be happy to help you out on your journey.