Battery wiring clutter

What the best route to declutter my battery? Too many wires running to battery. Buse bar and if so one for positive and one for negative? Thanks Tom

I had the same problem with my boat (bought used). I just unhooked everything and started putting them back one set at a time and then labeling them. I ended up with for sets that did nothing. I know the previous owner took two graphs and a Vantage with him.

It wasn’t the worst project by any means and is in great order now. I also drew a schematic of how the batteries (24V) are hooked up and taped in the battery comp…..I’m forgetful.

This is a job that’s worth doing right and doing once. You need a fused marine-grade terminal block, like this one:

A simple bus bar is not suitable for most marine small boat applications because the open terminal connectors could be contacted by a metal object causing a short and possibly sparks or fire. The bus bar is also not fused, so some other fuse arrangement would have to be used, which is not ideal.

Different sizes of terminal blocks are available, the example above is a 12 circuit, but you can get more circuits if needed.

The wire from the battery to the terminal block must be sized correctly. As must all wires coming out of the terminal block to the various appliances on the boat! Undersized wire is a MAJOR cause of issues with poor performance of electrical components on a boat. I almost NEVER see bilge pumps, a CRITICAL piece of safety gear on a boat, that are installed with wire size that allows for the specified max pumping rate. Now’s the time to check and rewire if necessary.

As long as you’re at it, put a blade cuttoff switch on the battery terminal between the terminal block and the battery so you can throw one master switch and turn off all power to the boat devices to prevent battery drain.

Grouse

This is the fuse box I have on the side of my console, 04 ProV.

That’s a good fuse block, but a better one to use also has a negative-side bus-bar, to help clean up that side of the wiring too.

HRG

https://powerwerx.com/blue-sea-5025-6-circuit-fuse-block

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Hot Runr Guy wrote:

That’s a good fuse block, but a better one to use also has a negative-side bus-bar, to help clean up that side of the wiring too.

Absolutely agree. I didn’t look closely enough at the model I’d grabbed. I’ve edited the pic in my post to include a negative bus model. Agree, this is much easier and neater to install.

Be sure to size correctly and IMO it’s worth buying a panel with more than enough capacity and circuits to allow for future expansions. Personally, I find it really nice to be able to isolate devices on their own circuit for both ease of installation and for any future troubleshooting that may be required.

Grouse

So then do you guys run your graphs through the fuse box, or do you wire them direct to the battery like the manual recommends?

My graphs on the console go thru the fuse box. The bow graph is straight to battery with an in line fuse.

biggill wrote:

So then do you guys run your graphs through the fuse box, or do you wire them direct to the battery like the manual recommends?

My graphs go thru the fuse panel, but then I have much larger wire (#8 or #10) running from the fuse panel to the battery.

HRG

Ok. Me too. I added a fuse panel to my boat this summer as well. I ran the graphs through the panel but I was getting lower voltage on one of my graphs.

Figured out it was a bad connection onna qd that I used.

biggill wrote:

I ran the graphs through the panel but I was getting lower voltage on one of my graphs.

Wire size too small for the length of the run would be my first suspect. Did you calculate wire gauge based on length of run and rated draw of the graph?

As you say, could also be bad connection.

Grouse