Quote:
Originally Posted by mikracer
Should that be a thicker gauge wire?
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Bigger is better, no mater what she says. When connecting two batteries, equal is better as well. The wires connecting batteries together should all be the same length and size.
You can use charts to find the right size like the following at the bottom of the page:
http://www.rbeelectronics.com/wtable.htm
But remember a table like this is to keep things from getting hot and melting. It assumes a 3% loss as satisfactory. However if you loose 3% from the alternator to the isolator, 3% from the isolator to the battery, 3% from the battery to the load (pump, cig lighter etc.) you can see performance going south quickly even though it is safe.
With no load I see very little voltage drop at the cig lighter, but that is deceptive. My blender works fine off the battery, but gives up on the cig lighter. So I think the voltage drop from wires and poor connections is more measurable with a load.
Use a fill in calculator like:
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
and put in one size bigger than the chart and the loss can down to like 1%. Over three runs you can see a total of 3% loss which is much better than 9%.