"Additionally cpan didn't want to install automatically. When I try "cpan install RPi-WiringPi" it returns without finding the module.

Neither cpan nor cpanm will allow you to install modules like this:

marto@shemp:~$ cpan install RPi-WiringPi
Reading '/home/marto/.cpan/Metadata'
  Database was generated on Tue, 04 Jul 2017 12:53:45 GMT
Warning: Cannot install RPi-WiringPi, don't know what it is.
Try the command

    i /RPi-WiringPi/

to find objects with matching identifiers.

marto@shemp:~$ cpan install HTML-Template
Reading '/home/marto/.cpan/Metadata'
  Database was generated on Tue, 04 Jul 2017 12:53:45 GMT
Warning: Cannot install HTML-Template, don't know what it is.
Try the command

    i /HTML-Template/

to find objects with matching identifiers.
marto@shemp:~$ cpanm RPi-WiringPi
! Finding RPi-WiringPi on cpanmetadb failed.
! Finding RPi-WiringPi () on mirror http://www.cpan.org failed.
! Couldn't find module or a distribution RPi-WiringPi
marto@shemp:~$ cpanm HTML-Template
! Finding HTML-Template on cpanmetadb failed.
! Finding HTML-Template () on mirror http://www.cpan.org failed.
! Couldn't find module or a distribution HTML-Template
[download]

On a related note, you could vastly reduce the time to install modules by using cpanm over cpan, it's paninful to watch cpan install modules on a Raspberry Pi. Once the dependancy wiringpi is installed cpanm RPi::WiringPi installs everything in a reasonable time for a Modeal A v1 Pi running a bunch of other stuff (apache, openvpn etc).

Update: parent updated since posting reply: adding "I finally read that you need to install WiringPi C lib first, before installing WiringPi::API. Then I also needed to manually install RPi-Pin-2.3603. Other than those glitches, it all installed fine."