So - I have my new boat. It's half buried in a pile of boxes and wires and tool boxes as I attempt to get it all rigged up.
I unbox my two chargers - both Minn Kota, a Precision 330, and an MK-2-DC alternator charger.
It's a tin boat (mea culpa, forgive me!), so the starting battery is in the rear and the two trolling motor batteries are under the front deck.
I have plenty of room on the starboard side to run cable through the rod locker and such to physically create connections between the batteries and the charger, but - the cords on the chargers aren't long enough. So, my choices are mount them both in the bow and extend the rear cables twice (one for each charger) or mount them both in the stern and extend FOUR cables - one for each bank on the charger.
The bow sounds like the good idea, right? Well, the MK-2-DC has some really heavy duty wiring and a massive 50A fuse in it, so I really don't want to cut that end up. So now we're back to the stern.
Rather than extending all 4 pairs of wires from the two chargers, I got to thinking - Now, I'm no electrician, but it seems to me that since the ring terminals from the chargers are stacked on top of one another on the battery terminal, I should just be able to connect the two chargers together and "extend the battery terminals" back to the rear of the boat and connect the chargers to those extensions, right? Before you guys jump all over me, I'm not a redneck, I'm not going to just twist wire everything together and cover it in a mass of electrical tape and call it good 'nuff. I want to do it right, and I want it to look like a professional install since it is a brand new boat.
I'm thinking I need a terminal block, right? Or, more correctly, two of them - one for each battery, right? So, two of these? https://www.jamestowndistributors.co...erminal+Blocks
Hopefully that's it. Then I just run two pairs of 12AWG wire from the bow batteries back to that terminal block (with fuses at the batteries on both positive/negative since it's a 24V system), wire the batteries to the terminal blocks, and then connect both the chargers to the terminal blocks and I'm done, right? Only one of the chargers will ever be energized at one time since one operates while the outboard is running and the other operates while I'm plugged into AC, so I'm not anticipating any problems there (plus I can't be the first guy to ever do this).
Please tell me I'm on the right track? Also, if there's anything else you guys would recommend that I do instead of/in addition to this solution, that would be great.
I will not be powering anything off these terminal blocks, only connecting the chargers. The trolling motor batteries are for dedicated use with the trolling motor.
If you made it this far, sorry I was so wordy, and thanks for reading all the way through! Thanks in advance for any advice you guys have!
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Originally Posted by marlinpruett
Correct. Not good to disregard the need of fuses. The charger has no way of protecting the charging wires.
