Mounting buss bars in battery compartment

[pablosgirl]

I have been upgrading my wiring and have reached the point where I have 4 wires attached to each of the positive and negative batery terminals and need to atach my new SmartGauge directly to the batery terminals as well.  I need to add bus bars to shift two of the wires off the battery terminals but the space is already tight with 4 GC2 6volt bateries.  I am looking for sugestions and pictures on where to mount them.  I considered placing them under the sink on the wall common with the batery compartment but that would require driling holes through the bulkhead.

[NewToTheRoad]

The Tech Wiki has some good articles and pics in the Electrical section.  I like this one as it's very comprehensive - check out pics 62-64.  I did something similar for my bus bars, following this article.

http://c34.org/wikiwp/?rdp_we_resource=http%3A%2F%2Fc34.org%2Fwiki%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3D1987_MK_1_Catalina_34_Electrical_System_Upgrade

good luck!

Bryan

[Jon W]

With short posts on the battery I ran out of room to add wires directly to the batteries. To help with that I used the Blue Sea 5024 shown in Photos 23, 24, and 64. Photo 65 shows a screw on extension I got from the battery supplier that helped on the negative post. Since these photos were taken I've added wires and fuses for the propane system and electric windlass to the "Always On" buss shown in the battery compartment. In the attached current photo you can see it has gotten tighter in there, but there is still room.

[Noah]

Jon- Why windlass on the "Always on Buss"?

[Ron Hill]

Paul :Blue Sea has BUSS bars that have a plastic cover that I'd recommend.  You just have to look at your battery compartment and see where you can make them fit!

Noah : Maybe Jon's sends "Always ON" power to a circuit beaker/switch, which is closer and easier to get to than in the battery compartment?!

A few thoughts

[Jon W]

I used the Blue Sea 2300 150A bussbar, with 10 #8 screws and 2 1/4" studs with the clear plastic cover that is removable. You can see it in both this photo and the one I posted earlier.

Ron is correct. The "always on" buss provides power to the breaker/isolator. The breaker/isolator has to be engaged to get power to the windlass, solenoid, and associated components. The attached photo shows the label on the cable in the battery compartment a little more clearly. The breaker is between the drop down leave for the galley counter and access door to the water heater and trash can on a MK 1. See attached photo for reference. Also attached a PDF of the schematic if anybody is interested. There is also a write-up in the Tech WIKI.

[Noah]

My anchor windless breaker (OEM) is mounted on the face/inside the battery box next to my master On/Off 12V House bank power switch.

[Jon W]

Hi Noah, I feared if I copied more of your design I'd owe you too much in royalties so did it slightly different.  The breaker/isolator is within the required 6 feet of cable length from my house bank, and running 1 AWG to the spot I put the breaker/isolator was easier to do. Being this breaker/isolator is waterproof there shouldn't be any worries with water from the sink or water heater.

Paul, I put the negative busbar for the house bank outside of the battery compartment. It is mounted to a "breadboard" I made and bonded to the hull by the starboard water tank. The Digital Echo Charger and shunt for the battery monitor are also mounted there. More photos and text on this in my project write-up in the Tech WIKI.