Yet another aux battery install - PICS but not verbose

[tencentlife]

Either will work.

In electrical jargon, a bus is just a place where a lot of things can be made common, in this case it would just be a place you could bring all the negative leads of your fused loads back to one location for grounding (the bus itself would in turn be connected to the vehicle chassis and thereby to the battery negative, or difrectly to the battery negative post).

But in vehicle wiring, the entire chassis of the vehicle acts as a negative or grounded bus, so any load circuit can be grounded by just connecting it to the metal of the vehicle chassis, without the need to bring the negative leads back to the battery.

So you can see why it wouldn't matter which fuse board you used.

Good luck.
_________________
Shop for unique Vanagon accessories at the Vanistan shop:
https://intrepidoverland.com/vanistan/

Please don't PM here, I will not reply.

Experience is kryptonite to doctrine.

[markz2004]

Seems like this would be a good thread to add to:

I am planning to add another battery to my house ‘bank’. Currently I’m using the 4-pack of UB12220s under the driver’s seat. My thought is simply to add another battery to the bank by running an additional wire from the bank to a 5th battery under the rear seat. Not exactly ideal, but seems like it will work. The additional battery will be a 55 ah Werker (same as a UB12550 - $135). This will give me a total of 143 ah.

For some background, my auxiliary set-up is wired like this:
1. Alternator with voltage regulator, wired to the starting battery as OE.
2. From the starting battery I have a Yandina to a 4-pack of UB12220 batteries under the driver’s seat.
3. The 4-pack is wired to the main terminals of my Blue Sea fuse box under the sink. Fuse box powers the Truck Fridge (AC/DC), 4 house lights, stereo, 1000W inverter, couple of 12v plugs.
4. Wired into the fuse box’s main terminals is my ProMite battery charger (single bank 5amp smart charger). The charger is connected to the exterior shore power hook-up – as is my TF. I’m basically using the main terminals on the fuse box as a connection point to the 4-pack.

In adding a 5th battery under the rear bench, I would wire it to the fuse box’s main terminals mostly for sake of ease.

Any comments appreciated.
- Having the all the house batteries “bank” separated by the 10’ of wire (8 or 10 gauge) make a noticeable difference in performance?
- Wiring to the main terminals could make it harder for the charger to sense the state of the battery?
- Is the run from the alternator/starting batter/yandia/4-pack/bench battery too long?

Thanks,
Mark
_________________
87 Westy, 250k GW 2.4 - 2.0 , 16" wheels

[iiigoiii]

a few issues you might want to think about.

- the long run of wire to the 5th battery may not matter as much for performance, but you'll need to size the wire large enough or there may be a voltage drop (and hence a voltage difference when charged) between that battery and the others.

- if the main battery bank is wired to the fuse box, you wouldn't need to wire the 5th battery to the box also...but i'm not sure what the effects of having that 'circular' circuit would be.

- you'd need to consider fusing the run to the 5th battery, as it would be long and possibly exposed to damage even if done inside cabinets

- i'd be concerned that the 5th battery, being dissimilar to the 4th, could cause one or more of the batteries to wear prematurely. the same concern was raised about the 4-bank back when it was first used. i wonder if it would be crazy to consider a second yandina between the 4 batteries and the 5th...?
_________________
1984 Westfalia Wolfsburg Ed. w/ Subaru EJ22 power

[singler3360]

[kurt vonnagon]

Trip battery's