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Rotzilla's avatar
Rotzilla
Explorer
Jul 24, 2015

Battery re-wiring ???

I have 2 24 series batteries wired parallel (12v), and have a rats nest of wires running out of my battery boxes.

I am considering using a bus bar attached to the frame to lessen the number of wires going directly to the batteries.

I have a solar panel controller, genset, camper main wire, and the parallel cables all attached directly to the battery.
Is there any thing that can be moved to the bus bar, or do charging items like the solar and genset have to be directly wired the batteries?

I am not a electrical engineer, so go easy on me, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
  • I just did this and out right copied westend's design. I ran my solar, inverter and trailer wires to the bus bar. Going to the battery I have a Pos and Neg off the bus bars as well as I left my genny starter cables attached to the battery. This made for a nice clean wire setup with everything protected by the trailer frame and nothing hanging below the frame.
    I ended up cutting and replacing the cable lugs on every wire under the trailer as they were to long to begin with. I purchase 2ga wire to run from my bus to battery but in the end I would have had enough just off the extra cable coming from the genny to make the bus to battery run. Yep there was an extra 4 feet of genny cable zip tied and hanging under the trailer on both the pos and neg side.
    I also found that the genny neg cables was grounded to the frame and then attached to the neg battery post. After thinking about it and talking with a RV tech I could come up with no reason the genny needed frame grounding and removed this extra chunk of wire, now the genny neg goes directly to the battery.

    I will post a few pic this weekend of my handy work.
  • Install bus bar in utility box and mount to frame. You will need one main fuse between the battery and the buss bar and individual fuses from the buss bar to the devices those wires power.

    I used these AMG style fuses because they're cheap and a 1/4" bolt fits the hole. They are not the quickest acting but will do the job. ANL fuses are the quickest to interrupt.

    Bus bar with fuses:
  • Sounds fine but do take pictures before removing any wires. Do not rely on your memory or color of wires.
  • On my last rv I bussed all of my positive cables on to a Blue Seas buss bar and ran size 0000 cable from the bar to the batteries.

    All my nagatives either went to the frame or the top of a shunt which was also frame grounded and the same size, 0000 to the batteries.

    Motivation was the same, to clean it up.

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