Friends, I thought I would describe a couple of little projects that have kept me amused and should prove useful.
The first addresses the closed-down drain our batteries suffer, which I have found can lead to a need for jump leads in as little as two weeks as my car has to live out and I cannot get power to it for a battery maintainer. I have installed a small 20W solar panel which hangs on the seat back of the passenger seat or has a stand to go on the dashboard top. Generally, I leave it in situ all the time, and try to park vaguely facing South with a clear line of sight to the sun. I can simply unhook its hanging cord and stash it behind the seat on the rare occasion that I have a passenger. The theory is that it will provide enough power to negate the battery drain from shut-down security programs the car is still running when locked. Time will tell. The charge regulator is the top item circled on the second photo, which I am sure you will all recognise as the hidden space under the rear seat centre arm rest. Cost of panel £16, regulator £7, both off eBay.

The centre item is a low voltage shut off (£9 from eBay) that provides volts to the floating cigar socket (£2 ditto) circled at the bottom, and which turns off when the voltage drops below 12.1V. This provides a power source for the portable fridge unit (bought from Halfords some 20 years ago) that I stand on the passenger seat when going to visit my daughter in North Wales, and which I fill chock full of deep-frozen goodies. It is all still deep frozen when I arrive having had 5-6 hours of pleasurable driving more or less up the length of Offa's Dike from the South Coast of England.

 

For some reason I could not get this photo into my first post. Every time I thought I had, it deleted itself. This is the 20W monocrystalline PV panel.

 

Poor man's heated seat?

 

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...6/#post2690216
my similarly amusing, project...