? Battery Cables - Color ?

My battery wires and inter connects
Are all marked red and black
Tape, liquid tape, hear shrink, or the wire color itself

It's a little late to change all my stuff but for low voltage I now use red and yellow. When I wired Quicksilver I used the surplus wire from the Space Shuttles refit. So white with blue stripe is neutral and orange with black stripe is 24V+

If a person would only take a moment, clean the battery terminals, and spray red for +, black for - and GREEN for both battery series connections, it would spell the end of confusion. But I know .001% of the folks reading this will "bother" to go through All-That-Trouble. It isn't plug-and-play. It's shrug and guess.

wa8yxm wrote:

RV's are wired by House type electricians, NOT by Automotive type Technicians.

Actually by House type who likely do not have electricity in their own House...

I like all the above ideas:

Tracing

Metering

Color Coding

Let me add these:

Start out with a Picture on your Digital Device

Tape all the wires going to one terminal into one Bundle and

All the wires going to the other terminal into another Bundle

It'd be great if one tape was Black and the other Red, but this keeps me from either missing one wire on re-connect, or, somehow getting all but one wire on the correct terminal...

I don't know what is so hard about 12v colors.
There ARE standards in the 12v industry.
Most any 12v appliance comes w/ black and white, in which case black is ALWAYS hot
Any 12v appliance that possibly comes w/ red and black, red is ALWAYS hot.
How can anyone mistake that ?

If and when you get into other colors, you are on your own, but even then there are some standards, like in LT, RT, and tail.

Colors on battery cables someeimes change as they move along

RV's are wired by House type electricians, NOT by Automotive type Technicians.

The difference is that in the world of Electronics, including Automotive, BLACK is Chassis ground (for the most part) and thus Negative

In the world of House ELectrical systems, Black is HOT (And thus Positive)

Why they reversed the colors.. I do not know,, I just know I'm cross trained.

The solution, or recommendation is to METER the leads.. Then once you get them properly connected.. PAINT (Nail polish, Testor's Or split loom) RED for positive, black for negative.

DrewE wrote:
The best rule of thumb I know of is to ignore the color of the wires completely and instead trace where they go. If the battery cable goes to chassis ground, it's a negative cable, regardless of whether it is white, black, pink, green, red, orange, or periwinkle with a lavender stripe and sage polkadots.

On my RV, the positive battery cable is red and the negative is black, for what it's worth. The negative has been replaced at least once and maybe more than once; the positive appears to me to be original, but who knows.

X2.......

There are NO color standards.

Check cable connections PRIOR to removal......mark them, photo them, ignore them.
BUT always verify which is which PRIOR to re-connecting cables.

Previous trailer.......RED/+ and Black/-
Previous 5vr...........Black/+ and White/-
This 5vr...............Red/+ and GREEN/-

Marine wiring colors ?

My battery has red and yellow wire :B

They sell shrink wrap and you can pick your own colors (haven't seen periwinkle, though). Cut a small piece of shrinkwrap and put it on the cable connection. That way, you can use colors as a schedule and you'll know what's right. I use black for ground and red for positive phase. The shrinkwrap will also help prevent corrosion within the wire jacket.

Shrink-wrapped cables:

The best rule of thumb I know of is to ignore the color of the wires completely and instead trace where they go. If the battery cable goes to chassis ground, it's a negative cable, regardless of whether it is white, black, pink, green, red, orange, or periwinkle with a lavender stripe and sage polkadots.

On my RV, the positive battery cable is red and the negative is black, for what it's worth. The negative has been replaced at least once and maybe more than once; the positive appears to me to be original, but who knows.