Forum Discussion

Vintage465's avatar
Oct 18, 2016

tidying up the battery hook up

On my Creek Side 20fq there is two 8ga. negative wires and two 8ga. positive wires going to the battery. There is also a wire coming from the electric tongue jack. I assume one of the hot wires is from the solar and one is for running everything else. And similarly, one of the negatives is screwed right to the frame and I assume the other one is the common for all the 12v everything. I was thinking I could get a nice 4"x4" or 5"x5" weather proof J-box and come into two lugs with the two negatives and the two positives. Then go out with just two larger wires like maybe #6 or #4 to the batteries. What do you guys think? I could also go out with a nice heavy jacketed 4 wire 6ga. Then there would still be the two each for negative and two each for positive, but they would be real tidy in a jacket.

Thoughts?

4 Replies

  • Should be a positive wire on the battery for the breakaway switch too. That wire should not be fused, so is separate, not spliced into a fused red wire upstream of a red's fuse.

    On our trailer the two red wires on the battery are for the battery-fuse panel- converter and the other one is for the slide.

    Ours also came with two whites on the neg post. One was the battery to frame "ground" to make the neg path through the frame for the battery-fuse panel circuit (power centre is "grounded" to frame near that. ) Never found out what the other one is for, but it must be on the frame because everything works with only one of them (either one)

    On ours the pre-wire for solar wires came with them dangling above the battery bank with no lugs on them. You have to take it from there to finish an installation. There is another spot inside the rig (under the kitchen sink in ours) where the pair from the roof meets the pair that goes to the battery bank. That is where they figured you would insert the controller. In fact the best way is to link the wires under the sink to be one long pair from roof to battery area, and put the controller near the battery with that long pair as input. Use another short pair you supply from the controller output to battery.
  • Vintage465 wrote:
    The charge line from the "7wire" ducks into the dark underworld of the belly sheeting and ties in somewhere unseen. It no doubt ties in somewhere downstream. But I won't have to worry about it for this project.


    Yes, my ORV Timber Ridge has a "secret" compartment in the floor behind the tongue accessed via the underbelly. The tow vehicle's charge line goes in there and connects to the line to the battery. IIRC on mine it also goes through a circuit breaker and the battery disconnect switch. The wiring in that compartment is complicated.

    But I didn't have two ground wires or the solar pos wire. Mine didn't come with the solar panels. I suspect one of the ground wires goes directly to your solar controller.

    Are you familiar with the ORV subforum over at IRV2 forums? Several Creekside owners there might have more info.
    http://www.irv2.com/forums/f282/
  • The charge line from the "7wire" ducks into the dark underworld of the belly sheeting and ties in somewhere unseen. It no doubt ties in somewhere downstream. But I won't have to worry about it for this project.
  • There should be one wire coming from the tow vehicle connector.
    Many rigs have a junction box where the trailer connector cable changes to the rig's wiring and the battery.
    Your thinking is correct. Many problems develop in the cheap box used by some manufacturers.
    I would check to see what size wire goes the the converter and do not use anything smaller.