Re: Winch Wiring and Battery Terminal Question
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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