New Inverter/House Bank

[vineyardgray]

Just about wired up:

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[vineyardgray]

Is this supposed to happen?

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[vineyardgray]

This really pissed me off, for a number of reasons:

1. Supposed to be solid equipment. I have not seen mention of this before.
2. I was already irritated because the rest of the Blue Seas stuff has lugs that are perpendicular to the mounting surface, not parallel to it, as these are. This orientation change results in a difficult cabling situation (see the prior photo of the huge jumpers I was forced to create). I will admit that I doubled up on my cable runs as opposed to buying heavier gauge cable, but the extra long lugs of the Blue Seas remote switch seem to infer that they expect a lot of connections.

During final torquing I heard a pop. I was forced to use a socket due to the orientation of the stud and the fact that the housing made back to back lug orientation impossible. I will also admit that I used power lugs instead of battery lugs which I did as I wanted the best installation possible - another reason I selected Blue Seas.

When I heard the housing pop, I had just given a final torque which I felt was necessary as the cable bundle was still easily movable by hand.

I have a second one of these as design plans changed after having purchased them. But now I'm weary of using them until I talk to the manufacturer .

[vineyardgray]

Luckily I had one of these on hand

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[vineyardgray]

The design of these piss me off as well for different reasons. They are a two part assembly, which is fine but when you screw the bottom housing to the bulkhead, the cabling pulls the snap-together housing apart and when you go to operate the switch it nearly pulls apart. Dumb design.

IMG_20191005_1627558.jpg

[vineyardgray]

At least I am able to use the lugs back to back as I had originally intended with this switch. So that's a plus.

There's no way I can mount it without the damn thing falling apart so I leave it hang on the cabling until I can get some 4" screws to hold the whole mess down.

I've also had to hang it upside down due to Lug orientation so I've taken the opportunity to mark it with a Sharpie to clearly show the off position.

IMG_20191005_1635186.jpg

[vineyardgray]

The final step is to close the circuit by adding the port engine ground (which ties the negative back to the panel through the port engine, generator,starboard engine and then through the existing starboard battery).

The Victron shunt that comes with the BMV is clearly not expecting to see Power and lugs that are much thicker than normal battery lug and therefore there's not enough thread

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I still need to add the battery negative to this bundle so I need to lose the lock washer in order to make everything fit.

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[bud37]

Regarding the shunt.....one side should only have one battery neg from the bank and the other side could have one cable to a negative bus for all the others.....that might ease the fit issue for you.

[Viper]

If the shunt is in the circuit that requires two pos and two neg cables to carry the max load, then it must be wired that way through the shunt as well.

FWIW, it's a good idea to use adhesive lined shrink tubing on all your connections for a few reasons; it helps protect the exposed wire from the elements, it helps stabilize the joint where the wire and lug meet, and it serves to isolate the terminal as the lugs will be a potential short hazard since they will stick out beyond some device covers as noted in the pics. This will be a red flag to a good surveyor. It'll be a pain to disconnect everything again but it's still doable if you get a good quality shrink tube that will shrink at least 3 times it's original size such. Ancor makes a good tube but there are cheaper brands out there that are good as well. I bet that crimper made things a lot easier, I use a hydraulic one.

I trust that you'll secure all the wiring to the bulkhead after you're finished connecting everything?

[bud37]

Source of the post If the shunt is in the circuit that requires two pos and two neg cables to carry the max load, then it must be wired that way through the shunt as well.

The victron shunts that I have installed are always in the black ground cable between the battery bank and the engine block / ground point......I don't understand why you would need two cables on each end of the shunt itself as it is only in the ground cable.