Trim off the insulation and slide on a terminal (this is 70 mm^2 cable about 10mm diam.) with an 8mm bolt hole.
Slide the terminal fully on and crimp securely
Slide the heat shrink tube oven and heat to make a nice tidy join.
Finally cover with HD flexible insulation.
So after much crimping, terminating and insulating the battery banks looked like this.
I'm told that it is not best practice to have different length cables to the bus bars as it may make a 10millivolt difference in charge rate when charging at 120amps.
DUH! I think I can live with that!
At the other end of all that is the special voltage controlled connector to allow for charging of the house batteries when the starting batteries are "full" (this is not strictly true but it's how it's advertised and is too complicated to deal with otherwise . . .). This is the second one of these (the other (directly underneath the new one) is for the auxiliary battery bank for truck 12Vdc). I'm now told that this is mounted upside down and will make a difference to the longevity of the device so I have to turn it over which is going to be a bit more awkward to mount but so be it.
And right up the other end (in the house floor) are the "bulkhead connectors mentioned in a previous post. These are upside down here as the long section is required to bring the top surface of the brass post up to the bus bar height (dictated by the shape of the component to which it is being connected) while the insulating part(s) go in from either side of the floor (to keep it insulated from everything) and a stainless stel bolt goes all the way through holding everything together and from falling out.
The "bus bars" are made from 3mm thick copper plate (have you ever noticed how hard it is to drill a nice hole in copper sheet?) and are more than adequate to carry the current. As with all things in this installation it's all about current, heat and voltage drop!
As a further aside and harking back to an earlier post when I had the truck weighed and the oil and filter changed. . . when I took the body off I had to get underneath to take all the bolts out and happened to look at the oil filter housing. There are TWO canisters attached to it and neither of them seemed to be particularly clean. In fact they looked like they had never been touched . . . a thought confirmed by several reasonably mechanical friends who had a look. It still baffled me as to how they were able to clean and change them internally without cleaning off a little of the outside dirt. A visit to the local branch of the dealer confirmed that one was a centrifugal filter and the other was a cartridge and the outside was normally cleaned during a filter change operation. In fact the local foreman said it was their practice to change the clamp and seal on the centrifugal filter each time it was removed as it was a critical part of the engine oil supply.
Time to go visit the main depot where the job was done.
"Excuse me can you have a look at my truck oil filter for me?"
"Jeez! Pretty dirty mate. When'd you last get it changed?"
"It was done here last week!"
"Hmmm. I'll go talk to the foreman . . ."
.
.
.
"Yes. It was definitely changed."
"I know the oil was changed but I am concerned the mechanic was distracted and the filter was missed."
"No way mate. See it says on the invoice change oil and filter."
"Yes I see that. Right next to the charge for weighing the truck. That was stuffed up too, and I can see the charge for the oil but I can't see the charge for the filter"
"Shit! Don't know how I missed charging for that! Better bring the truck into the workshop and we'll have another look."
.
.
(some little time later)
.
"Yair. It was an apprentice who did the job and he didn't know the other filter was a centrifugal one and needed cleaning too but we've done that now and the cartridge filter was definitely changed and we've topped up the oil and there is no further charge."
"Thank you. And fuck you too!!"
No comments:
Post a Comment