First Published on July 9 2018
If you checked out my “Stealth Solar Panel Installation” you will have seen I installed some glass panels on a VW T5 and still kept a bit of a ‘stealth’ appearance. This post will show you some more detail how I did it and how you can do the same.
Usuall, people who want a ‘sleath’ look for their vans go for Semi-Flexible PV Panels as they are very thin and can be stuck down onto a roof. The problem is those panels are quite a bit more expensive than the glass panels if you want reliable ones (talking well over twice the price) OR ones which will likely fail prematurely if the budget ones bought.
I wanted to show you can use the budget but reliable option of the Rigid Glass Panel in a non-obtrusive way.
My T5 had Roof Rails installed, and I took advatange of this by using the available Cross-bars for these rails as supports for the Solar Panels, as can be seen in this photo
Measurements taken showed that the Crossbars had a thickness of around 30mm, and the Rails are around 35mm deep. This is co-incidentally the same within a couple of mm as the thickness of the Glass PV Panel.
By careful positioning of the supports for the PV Panels on the Crossbars, it will be possible to have the Panel virtually invisible.
After drilling holes in the appropriate places in the Crossbars, I used Rivnuts to provide a secure mounting method
I used a strip of Aluminium L/Angle Profile to bolt onto the Crosscar, and the PV Panels sat on this Strip, with mounting holes added to the panel to allow the Panel to be secured.
It would be possible to attach the PV Panels direct to the Crossbars, but using the strip allowed a quicker and more reliable alignment of the panel to the crossbars.
This method meant the complete PV Panel setup could be assembled on a convenient workbench and taken to the vehicle as a complete module to be fitted
Check out the “Stealth Solar Installation” post to see how the Panels fitted on top and how the cables were routed into the Camper.