Cleanest Battery Connection

Hey guys so I just wired up all 4 hella 500's and some additional off brand lights in the camper shell that face outward. My problem is now I have 6 wires connected to the battery. Is there a way to make this any cleaner? I hate having a ton of wires running everywhere. Show me some pics or solutions!

 

The best alternative is to get another fuse block, as mentioned above. That way you only have one wire to the battery and have all the fuses in one location.

The Blue Sea 6 or 12 is a popular choice.

 

Ok I looked at both of those options but i'm still confused about them. Can anyone post pics of your setup and a brief explanation of whats going on? Kinda a newbie when it comes to electrical work... Thanks!

 

http://www.streetwires.com/products/default.aspx?grp=63

 

blue sea fuse box. if you search around here or google (its the first one that popped up for me), there are several install threads...and no, i will not search for you...

 

I dont have any way to take pics, and even if I did, it probably wouldn't make a lot of sense to you since my setup is a bit more complicated.

Anyway, the basics is you run a heavy gauge wire (10 or 12 should be fine) from the battery to the fuse box. This wire should have a fuse in it, rated up to or above the total of all your amps.

Then you just plug all those 6 wires into the fuse box instead of directly to the battery. You dont need an inline fuse in these because you'll have to plug a fuse into the fuse box anyway. It doesn't hurt anything to double fuse something, but does make tracking things down twice as hard if something blows.

Its really quite simple. The fuse box is an extension of the battery with a place to keep all your fuses visible.

It doesn't really matter if you're running through a relay or running power through the switch, or whatever. It's just the lighting wires that are attached to the battery get moved to the fuse box and a main wire goes from the fuse box to the battery.

To figure out what size of fuse you need, you just divide the watts by the volts (1 Hella 500 is 55watts running on a 12volt system = 4.58 amps, so a 5amp fuse is good). You want to go to the next highest fuse (11 amps current will blow a 10 amp fuse, so you'd need a 15 amp fuse)