I am installing a winch.
I was hoping to put ends like these military versions on my battery cables. I have them on my 4Runner and like that they allow for lots of accessory additions or lugs to be bolted on.


The cables on my 2005 E250 under-hood battery have multiple connectors right now and the positive even looks like it has a long bar that other items attach to.

Has anyone changed these cable lugs to be more addition friendly?
Is there a good way to adapt the current cables to accept the copper lugs from the winch?
What worked for you?

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George ><>
2005 5.4L E250 RB50 4x4 SMB
2000 4Runner Limited 4WD

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

I'd think those would work fine if you have room and they're rated high enough.

I went a slightly different route by adding a centrally located power bar on the frame that everything (starting batteries, winch, & house buss) comes in to one point so I can easily kill each circuit due to the fact that dropping the batteries is such a PITA.



But I had to completely rebuild the starting battery cable system after Ford caused it to burn up. An expensive upgrade for sure but cheaper than a factory harness.

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2006 Ford 6.0PSD EB-50/E-PH SMB 4X4 Rock Crawler Trailer

Sportsmobile 4X4 Adventures..........On and off road adventures

I've used these military terminals on my Jeep (and maybe on the SMB, I forget).

They're good. I cut off the factory terminals, and got my own terminals and heavy gauge crimper. Also put on some thick heat shrink. Looked factory when I was done. I'll try and take a picture later.

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Sportsmobile-less.

"A job worth doing is worth doing at least twice."

I've used bus bars and etc. for my house wiring, but I did use something like what you show on the Ford start battery on my 1998 (and on a buddy's 2003) E-350. Both of ours had the same Ford battery "harness," which we modified slightly.

First, here are adapters similar to what I used. They are known as "marine battery terminals." These are lead, but you can get fancier ones in tinned copper as well. I immediately threw away the wing nuts and used real ones. The ones I got follow the convention I'm used to which is 3/8" stud/post for positive and 5/16" for negative.



Here is the positive terminal I had originally. The "double" red wire is the Ford wire, and the other two are for the way my particular rig had the wire to the separator and the wire to the generator start (the latter since moved to house bank). You can see why I wanted to change things... ugh!





As you can see in the first of the above two photos (at least on the 1998 and 2003 I worked on), the Ford "harness" includes a battery clamp (which precludes adding the marine terminals). What I did was cut that off, then "pare away" the red insulation around the double red wire until I got to the two underlying wires (each of which have their own insulation). It has been a few months since I did this, but I'm almost positive they were a #6 and a #4 wire. On my buddy's rig, we put individual ring terminal lugs (FTZ brand) on each of those wires, and on mine (IIRC) I fit them both into a #2 ring terminal lug (FTZ brand). There are plusses and minuses to each way, but I think the two separate ones came out a little nicer (because there was less of a ridge for the heat shrink tubing to go over at the back end of the lug. I think we bent the "tab" of each lug to make it fit properly on the marine terminal.

Then, for the wire leading to the separator/house system, I put a Blue Sea MRBF terminal on the marine post (even according to ABYC, who are conservative, you can have up to four lugs on a terminal) with an MRBF fuse appropriately rated for the wire leading back to the house (which I upped in size). I wasn't sure if this would fit under the hood height-wise (the MRBF terminal sticks up), but made a little "dunce cap" of putty and stuck it on top of the MRBF terminal and closed the hood and it did not touch it, so it was good (this on a Group 65 battery in the stock tray that comes with a V-10).

See next post because this one is limited to three images...

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Here is an MRBF terminal and fuse. The open hole goes on the marine terminal and the house wire (or whatever is the fused wire) goes on over the square fuse. The MRBF has an AIC (ampere interrupt capacity) of 10,000, so it's suitable for one good-sized starting battery.



I also re-did the negative terminal similarly. On that, there is the bigger wire (#4 IIRC) that goes to the starter, and the smaller wire just goes less than a foot away to a ground spot. I replaced that shorter wire with a new one just because, with a ring lug on the battery side. The larger cable that went to the starter I also put a new lug on so it would fit on the marine terminal. When I looked down by the starter (other end of that negative wire) I saw this little bit of loveliness:



A split in the insulation where the wire made a bend, and green strands inside. Num. So I cut off the last 10" or so (back to good copper) and used an FTZ butt splice (metal lug) to put on a new section of tinned #4 wire with a ring/lug on the end to attach to the starter. I bent the lug a bit and oriented the wire in such a way that that acute bend was not needed in the new wire. Plus good adhesive heat-shrink tubing (which I use on all connections like this).

I never noticed anything amiss before (in starting behavior), and I can't tell if it was that wire (because I put in a new battery at the same time as I did this work), but the starter is super fast now. Almost starts before I turn the key!

Now that I wrote this I realize I never took any "after" photos though.

Viva

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