Too many wires going to my battery or not? What would you do?

Being the ignorant slut that I am, I was one of those people that followed the advice of the internet and bought a Sears Diehard Platinum Group 31M battery.
Life was grand, it had secondary terminal posts for accessories. Awesome.

One year later, not surprisingly, it died. I learned that AGMs don't like to be run as starting batteries (because I'm an ignorant slut). I warrantied it out for a regular old group 27F.


Being slightly wiser, yet still needing help, I'm trying to determine the best way to get all my accessories attached back up. I need to attach:

• normal wires (which I need to be upgrading)
• stereo amplifier cable (positive only)
• Bluesea accessory fuse box
• winch

I can jimmy-rig it all on to the stock terminals if I really had to, but it's messy.

Can I just get a fancier set of battery terminals (

$24 Kicker Battery Terminal (BT4) Positive or Negative Competition Brass Battery Terminal with Two 1/0-8 Gauge and One 4-8 Gauge Output

link) or do a distribution block, or am I crossing over into dual battery land? I don't need to run things with the engine off, so I'd really rather avoid the expense of the dual battery idea...

 

This is the first I'm hearing of AGMs not liking to be starting batteries. Sounds like you got a dud, mine loves starting duty so much it sat for a whole month in below freezing temps and still cranked the truck to life. Being a starting battery is like the easiest job, that's why deep cycle and marine batteries cost even more.

On to the topic at hand though. I would consider just putting terminal lugs on all your connections and run battery connections that use screws or bolts.

 

Interesting I bought the Deka (East Penn Manufacturing ) AGM 9A34R battery

A second at that it has been doing starting duty the last 3 years just fine.

As to your wire issue go with whatever works best or you like best

Both have pros and cons

Distribution block can be bought with circuit protection breakers or fuses

Added space on battery terminal your splicing inline fuses

 

First off, I got the size wrong - 27F is what I have now. I'm guessing the JC-27F. I could confirm, but I have to unbury my truck from snow.
Secondly, I didn't type out what I should have completely - AGM marine deep cycle

Apologies

My mechanic and the guy at Sears made me feel like an idiot for using a deep cycle marine "for the wrong purpose."
I did read this post, and it falls in line with the situations I was facing - whenever the temperature started getting cold outside, the battery was done for. The mechanic charged it for half a day, then put on a load, and the battery totally gave out, even though it still reported a good about of CCAs - more than a group 27F puts out.
Doing some more cruising around the web today, I read through this first page, and found possible culprits to why mine died:

• cold weather
• bouncing around alot offroad could have damaged the plates
• lots of gear hooked up. I used to be religious about turning off lights and the stereo before shutting down a vehicle until someone told me it wasn't a big deal, so it's possible the added draw over the stock engine could be a big strain for starting (referencing my last link, it mentioned stock battery size CCA + 20% = deep cycle CCA)
• it's a deep cycle, not a hybrid deep cycle (as opposed to @Wyoming09 's battery, which is a hybrid)

I did that before, but it gets hard trying to fit it all. I might finagle with it again, but thought I'd ask before forcing things to my will.
This was me on stock battery. From the picture,

• red cable upper left is winch positive
• silver cable is stereo amp positive
• black insulated wire and plastic loom is stock positive
• not pictured, added later was the positive lead for the fuse block in 4AWG that would hook on the same way as stereo positive
• ground has blue-striped winch ground and stock ground
• not pictured, added later was fuse block ground in 4AWG. I don't know where I would have connected it in the past, but I now have it hooked to the same chassis ground point as the factory wire (which you can see, it's the bolt against the sidewall)

I thought the idea of a new battery terminal that allowed for more wires would be the ticket, but I need at least a configuration that does one 1/0AWG (if I were to do big 3 upgrade) and two 4AWG (winch and stereo amp).
I still have the fuse block, and I'm not sure if I can downgrade the wire to 8AWG? It runs CB, alarm, handheld GPS, possible future HAM radio, possible future VHF radio (for search & rescue).

 

Oh, and I'm not sure if I would want an AGM in the future? I was reading through this and it sounds like the small battery tenders aren't up to the task.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3338802/1

 

So this is an old picture but it gets the point across. I meant put lugs on all of your connections including alternator and starter so that you can use battery terminals designed for making use of such connections. That way it doesn't become a mess.


Also AGM is most certainly the way to go... higher CCA, better weather resistance, less sulphation, but yes they do need a proper charger and it doesn't hurt to buy a quality AGM battery. The DieHard you have and the DieHard I have are two separate beasts. Mine was made when Odyssey was providing the batteries for Sears yours is through the new contractor and those have yet to prove their worth. So perhaps an Odyssey, Northstar, or Deka for your next battery.

Finally, the charger I've been recommended for AGM batteries is this one...

CTEK (56-864) MUS4.3 12 Volt Fully Automatic 8 Step Battery Charger,Black

https://www.amazon.com/CTEK-56-864-Automatic-Battery-Charger/dp/B006G14FK8

I read its manual and it seems that it has the proper detection and recovery logic to safely charge and maintain an AGM battery.

 

I get what you are saying, and my stuff is ready to go for that, I just couldn't find that style of terminal replacements on Amazon. Stinger doesn't make that style anymore, either.
However, I just got lucky poking on eBay and found Jim's Machineworx. Spendy little buggers, but I think this does the job, LOL. They either do lug type (i.e., terminal) or screw type, and support up to 4/0 if you are getting stupid.

https://jims-machineworkx.myshopify.com/collections/battery-terminals

Are you sure they were different? I thought the DieHard Platinum were all Enersys up until the end (mine was a grey top, blue sides, purchased one year ago). From what I know, they haven't signed with a new contractor to replace anything that big, otherwise they would have been fine with giving me a direct replacement.
I'll be waiting until this warranty and battery run out, then I'll look again at AGM (this time in hybrid!!). However, I'm not sure if my 20 minute drives to the office would shorten its lifespan, as I've read from a poster called wrcsixeight on a different forum:

I don't know if he was talking about AGMs or all batteries in general, though it seems that AGMs want a longer charge period... so I don't know.

Careful about manuals and claims, I was all about to jump on a black Friday deal on a NOCO charger, but I've read their claims about how 'genius' there chargers are don't really add up. CTEK, however, seems to be one of the good ones.
I was thinking about a CTEK, and also comparing a Pro-Logix, all the same week when my battery gave out

One thing to note for Odyssey AGM, they charge different. More reading from that wrcsixeight guy, same thread, he had some interesting stuff to say. I took out some excerpts below, he has a lot to say. I don't know if the CTEK you posted would be fine, or if you need something bigger. He was looking at a CTEK Multi US 25000, but this guy also uses a custom 40A manual power supply he built to charge batteries Some of us mod trucks, others mod battery chargers I guess...

 

Those terminals are very cool, probably overkill for me but cool nonetheless. I am sure my DieHard Platinum is an Odyssey (Enersys, they are the same company) as I have had the good fortune to compare it with it's exact counterpart (PC-1500T with plastic riser). Sears switched manufacturers two years ago now so yours is likely not an EnerSys.

 

Yes, overkill. I just can't get quite the configuration I want without doing it that way it looks like.

https://youtu.be/-Y2R01k4SXI

 

Now the rest of the story A Deep cycle battery is pretty much made to be discharged to near flat with a constant type load then recharged .

Not the massive load of starting

My commute to work is 5 miles the long way the big trip is the 18mile round trip grocery shopping.

I bought a Fancy Charger at Deka when i bought the battery .

It does all the different battery types one can not have enough battery chargers

All my wiring has lug terminals

 

Have you looked at the military style battery post connectors? They are relatively affordable and by flipping the lugs around, you can fit 4 large diameter battery cables. In pic below you can see how my 2AWG ground cables are connected to my aux battery. And/or use a distribution power block - you can connect about 3 or 4 power wires to it, depending on the wire size. I'm using this also on my primary battery, but I'm using it to route the alternator charge wire to both batteries.

 

I'm running an XS Power Group 31 AGM Battery in my truck with the pelfrybilt battery cage. So far I love it, paired up with the bussmann fuse panel I wired up and the added terminals for extra mounting points on the truck everything works mint. I work for a performance tuning shop and all we use/sell are CTEK Battery Tenders, they have been great with the odyssey batterys and I have one on my Evo's XS Power AGM Battery as well which is on year round since the vehicle is for weekend use only. You do have to be careful with the AGM batteries on charging, I have mine on the snowflake/winter setting currently as both my vehicles are in storage while I'm across country for work. Putting it on recovery mode will cook the battery (literally.. cook it). If you look closely in the photo there are two plates added to my battery terminals that give me additional mounting points using wing-nuts to tie them down. I have gone off roading with these on and have yet to have anything vibrate loose yet.

To the OP - one thing you could do is run fuse panel with relayed connections, it eliminates the tons of wires going to the battery, fuses all of the system and allows you to put a breaker inline before the fuse panel to cut all aux accessory power in case of emergency.

Dont mind the sketchy wiring in the back behind the fuse box, I was testing some LED pods out for a night so I just make a quick ghetto wiring harness for them before I had the fuse panel in.

 

Don't use screwball crap on the battery lugs.
Immediately behind the battery, is the main electric junction box.
A big wire runs from the battery into that box.

What you want to do, is get an additional distribution box, and run a short wire from the existing box over to it.
You get your NEGATIVE from the point where the battery negative wire bolts onto the body, also right behind the battery.