Grouse, I’m curious about the “dodgy” wiring when using ring terminals to connect my Helix directly to the starting battery. I have an inline fuse so I should be protected and have heard running power directly from the battery gives much better/cleaner power versus bundling with other wires and fuse blocks. Hopefully I’m not messing something up.
The ring terminal to battery deal is like potato chips. Almost nobody can stop at just one. So you end up with a stack of ring terminals on the battery posts with the potential of corrosion issues and just a general mess. And it’s great that you have an inline fuse but you’d be amazed at how many of these hairballs I’ve taken apart that were completely unfused. also, those little inline fuse holders are notorious for getting water inside, they have to be kept away from as much water as possible. I just fixed a depth finder in Canada that had an inline fuse and of course it had gotten water into it and was all corroded.
Better and cleaner power? Well… That depends on whether you calculated the resistance correctly over the exact run of cable such that you used properly sized wire, that you did good, low resistance splices, and of course, you used shrink wrap or used marine grade waterproof splices at every joint.
DC power has a greater amperage drop over the run distance of the cables, so it is ESSENTIAL that the wire be sized correctly to account for the length of the run and that you use the shortest run possible. If you have an existing fuse block, that block should be fed from the battery by a large cable capable of carrying amperage for multiple devices. So if the shortest run can be had by simply running to a terminal block, then that’s the best and most reliable way to go. I also like fuse blocks because it keeps everything organized and then there’s no trying to figure out which of the 4 inline fuse deals is the right one to look at when Device X stops working.
