The Long-Term GWM Cannon/Poer/P-series Review Thread

[Disco Nic]

Long been threatening it, so now feels like the right time.

December saw Swakopmund invaded by Suffers as usual, so the missus and I decided we need to hit up Spitzkoppe. So off I went to build out the Canopy. Many thanks to Ginger for the help, guidance and patience.

First things first, ran a 10mm2 cable from battery (with a 100A fuse and Fuse Holder) into the rear of cab. As mentioned before the sound is dog awful, but we fitted a Flat-Sub/Amp under the seat that has made a huge difference. Earthed into the chassis through the Seat Bolts, and Amp is hooked up with a standard 50A plug. If I need it for something else, I can just hook up to that plug. Since it isn't isolated from main battery, I won't ever go this way, but it's good to have options.

[Disco Nic]

Now for the actual interesting bit... Ran Wiring into the rear of the bak, through the grommets between Cab and bak. Earthed at Chassis where the Fender bolts into the frame.

Next step, I had a Fridge Slide + Battery Tray fabricated by Juka Engineering in Swakopmund. 1400mm slides, 180kg weight rating. Slide is built to load the fridge and two ammo boxes stacked on top of each other. As an extra feature, I had a solid Wooden chopping board fitted to the slide, can pull out once fully open. Rock solid and very well designed.

The battery Bracket is designed around the NL DCDC 25 Powerback, bolted to the tub and also mounted rock solid. Running a 100A Gel battery, so far it has gone 4 days between charge running my SnoMaster 42l.

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Lastly, I fitted a solar panel and some lights inside the canopy. Solar panel came out great, 150W unit mounted to Front Runner Loaders. Drilled through the canopy roof and filled the gaps with Sikaflex. Has been waterproof without any issues.

Lastly, I ran another positive to the rear of the bakkie, terminating next to my license plate. This is a 50A plug that I use when towing, to power my trailer battery. Earthed it through the bolts mounting towbar to chassis and put a 40A fuse here too. Not sure if that was needed, but I had a spare fuse so I figured why not.

[Disco Nic]

Next Steps:

Dust proofing the canopy. We do a lot of gravel travel, so it gets a little wild back there

The wiring is a mess, so I will be running all cables along the side of the slider using some D-Clamps to get the cables neat and out of the way. The wiring for the lights needs to be reworked. if you look closely, you can see that I originally glues the wiring in place but the paint of the canopy was done very poorly so it came apart very quickly... (another issue for another day)

Overall, I'm happy with the setup and how everything works. We've been on 4 trips so far and I've never had beer go warm.

[Paul#25]

Nice setup that you have done. The only thing that I'd do differently is to run negative cables to each power point instead of relying on the body for the negative conductor. I've never had a problem with doing installation with two cables but have chased bad earths numerous times when working on vehicles that have an installation like yours. There are just too many places where a slight bit of corrosion starts and you start getting a high resistance area. Normally if I have a problem with a system like that, the first thing I do is run new negative wires which fixes the problem straight away.