Community Forums

slickest1 · 12-16-2013, 08:35 PM

Today I bit the Bullet and bought 4 new House Batteries.(Trojan's) I cleaned up the battery compartment and all the cables hooked them all up, all is good. Shoved the tray back in and the cables are binding up behind the tray. I pull it out and notice the positive cable looks funny. The end is ready to break off where it fastens to the battery.
Ahhrrrgg. Now I have to crawl under there and find where it goes so I can replace it or fix it.

I thought it was ready to go for next month. Are you ever done?

J Birder · 12-16-2013, 10:34 PM

You might be able to either re-crimp the connector with a pair of vicegrips, or possibly solder it with a propane torch.

Joel

TQ60 · 12-16-2013, 10:58 PM

Connector will melt maybe depending on what it is.

Many different options for replacement from garbage to great.

Marine will be best

spritz · 12-17-2013, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slickest1

Today I bit the Bullet and bought 4 new House Batteries.(Trojan's) I cleaned up the battery compartment and all the cables hooked them all up, all is good. Shoved the tray back in and the cables are binding up behind the tray. I pull it out and notice the positive cable looks funny. The end is ready to break off where it fastens to the battery.
Ahhrrrgg. Now I have to crawl under there and find where it goes so I can replace it or fix it.

I thought it was ready to go for next month. Are you ever done?

B
don't feel bad I am finishing up getting ready to head South next month and now have a leak somewhere, antifreeze neighbor borrowed me a pressure tester but waiting for the weather to hold out. Maybe tomorrow suppose to be in the 30's

above

I am hoping a hose or clamp but not the radiator or water pump

Bigd9 · 12-17-2013, 11:55 AM

Quote:

I thought it was ready to go for next month. Are you ever done?

NO NEVER! RV's are kind of like my DW, as soon as I complete one Honey Do, magically there is another one to do.

richardcoxid · 12-17-2013, 03:41 PM

Take a piece of 1” thick bar stock 1”-2” wide and about 4”-6” long, drill a hole that is big enough that the widest part of the crimp on terminal will pass thru. Drill and tap a hole 90 degrees to the other hole on the same centerline for a ¼” or 5/16” bolt. Put crimper in a vice, insert cable with terminal in place, tighten bolt to crimp cable tight against the terminal. The bolt will leave a nice pretty round dimple in the terminal. When finished put homemade crimper in tool box, you never know when you will need it again. Or as I have done in an emergency place the cable with the terminal on the vice/heavy piece of steel/anvil, lay a 3/8” or ½” dia piece of steel bar stock at 90 degrees across the terminal and hit it with a heavy hammer, not as pretty but it works. Be sure to wear eye protection!

The other thing, go to your local welding supply dealer and buy their welding cable/terminals. They will have welding cable in many sizes and sometimes in red/black and a great selection of terminals. Another advantage is that welding cable is very flexible and has industrial strength insulation. It will also be much less expensive than your Rv/Audio/Car parts dealer. If I have the CORRECT length my local welding equipment dealer will cut the cable to length and also crimp the terminals on for me.

Loren Rice · 12-17-2013, 04:25 PM

I learned something the other day, perhaps you already know this. All the jumpers between your batteries should all be the same length, same gauge of wire, and have similar connectors. Now if you have four batteries making up your house battery system you should also have your house positive cable and neg cable connected to your battery system diagonally from each other.

So envision four batteries sitting as follows The top left one I'll call #1 the top right #2. The lower left #3 and lower right 4.So in my example the top two 6v batteries are in series and the bottom two are in series. So the two left two batteries that are tied together in parallel This is the plus side. On the plus side you connect the house cable on the plus terminal of battery#1 then on the right batteries there the parallel jumper connects the neg terminals of these batteries, and the house battery cable is connected to the neg tern on battery 4. In this way you balance the current draw to the four batteries. Hope you can follow what I'm saying -- wish I knew how to do a diagram on this form. The reason for doing this is there can be huge effects of small resistance drops across what looks like small resistance differences in different length of wire size jumpers. Also so the if house connection is off the top two batteries there is a small resistance that greatly affects current draw from the nearest battery Vs. the back batteries by way of the jumpers. This makes a difference in the life span of your batteries in your system. Batteries operate in a world of high current --but low voltage. Even a 1/4 ohm at a hundred amps adds a huge voltage drop and so one pair of the 4 batteries could be doing most of the work. Ever had 2 out of the 4 go bad or dead? Less standby than you did a few days earlier? Or maybe you have tow of the four batteries bulging, Often it because the Condition of the connector to the wire is not perfect and the term to the battery perfectly clean as well.
Hope I've helped.

Loren

slickest1 · 12-17-2013, 06:53 PM

Thanks richardcoxid, that sounds like a good tool to make.

Thanks Loren Rice that is good info. I had never really thought about it that way.

It was raining cats and dogs here today so I never got out there to see where that cable goes. I am hoping it to the main shutoff where it will be easy to take off and deal with in the shop.

These things are like women, and I say that looking over my shoulder.

richardcoxid · 12-17-2013, 10:04 PM

I like Loren Rice wish that I knew how to insert a small sketch into this forum for the home made crimping tool!

richardcoxid · 12-17-2013, 10:18 PM

Something else just came to my mind. A welding equipment supply shop will have a book that shows the resistance/foot of cable run. This can be used as a guide as to what gauge of cable to use. When I rewired my 5w for 4 deep cycle 6V batteries with a “off- batt 1, batt 2, both” isolation switch I estimated the longest cable run and then went 1 gauge size bigger (reduce the restistance/foot) to help reduce the effect that Loren Rice mentioned. Sometimes considering the location of each pair of batteries, the isolation switch and the 12V power distribution panel it is almost impossible to make the cable runs the same length.

Loren Rice · 12-18-2013, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richardcoxid

Something else just came to my mind. A welding equipment supply shop will have a book that shows the resistance/foot of cable run. This can be used as a guide as to what gauge of cable to use. When I rewired my 5w for 4 deep cycle 6V batteries with a “off- batt 1, batt 2, both” isolation switch I estimated the longest cable run and then went 1 gauge size bigger (reduce the restistance/foot) to help reduce the effect that Loren Rice mentioned. Sometimes considering the location of each pair of batteries, the isolation switch and the 12V power distribution panel it is almost impossible to make the cable runs the same length.

Richard,
Welding cables and the terminals available to fit are a good way to go. I do this myself as well. It's desirable to keep the battery leads to the motor-home as short as possible (greater efficiency) In many cases, you do what you have to do because the manufacturer has sold a good or not so good arrangement.Do the best you can here is all you can do.

It's The battery jumpers that are most important to be of equal length. These are the ones used to combine all the battery's together, making one large battery out of four. So we're really talking of a way to get maximum output from a set of (typically 4 but could be 6) batteries to work as one battery. So often after a battery system has been in use a few years the jumpers are corroded perhaps one got totaled so it is replaced and is different than all the others. I try to find one exactly the same gauge and length as the others, but if they're all kinda different-- it can make a great difference to replace them all and get back to having all the battery jumpers alike. What you get for all this trouble is much more reliability from all the individual batteries that make up your system. Again it can be the imbalance set up by corroded terminals, or bad jumpers that set the stage for and individual battery failure-- then the whole bank fails just a little while later, and you've had poor performance during this time.

Loren

richardcoxid · 12-18-2013, 01:43 PM

Good point Loren, about the importance of equal length/gauge jumper cables. I completely over looked it! When it gets warmer (16* F now) I will have to check it out. If I remember correctly I continued to use the OE jumper (gauge?, maybe #6?) on the OE battery bank and used #4 gauge jumper on the new set of Batteries.

slickest1 · 12-18-2013, 08:47 PM

Today I got under there and fished out the cable. What a nasty job that was. When you could use 4 ft of cable they chose to use 7ft. , and ran it up and over the frame and back down.
I took it down to the electrical shop that used to do my big truck stuff and they cut off a ft of bad cable and put a new end on.
It is all back together and all is right in my world.
Thanks for the Idea's, and I checked all my jumpers and they are all the same length.