Battery fuese/trips

[StarCruiser]

Well, the question was about fusing the main battery cables, so debating the assumption isn’t really that relevant, and is splitting hairs. the message is, in order to be safe, correctly fuse your accessories, not the main battery cables!! It’s highly unlikely that a fire would start from a fault on you battery cables for all the reasons above and a fuse on those will not protect you from a fire on cabling for accessories which is more probable.

I think you’ve misunderstood my point Andy, you said ‘the fire was probably caused by wiring behind the light, so it was already on a fused cable’. My point is we don’t know that the wiring was fused do we? I agree if it was factory Toyota wiring then yes it will have been fused. But my point is, we don’t know whether any wiring was added and whether or not it was fused at the battery. Much wiring as we know gets added to these trucks for various reasons, my point being to highlight the absolute need for fusing at the battery terminal but not to second guess Byron’s setup…because we don’t know, do we?

I did say that I agreed with everything else, which meant especially that a battery cable fuse won’t protect the thinner wires from fire.

To say the post is splitting hairs is rather inaccurate, and somewhat unfair…don’t you think?

 

[moggy1968]

Moving on, I think we are agreed that all ancillaries should be individually fused. A battery cut off on the -ve thats accessible without lifting the bonnet is a good idea and a secondary emergency bonnet release. Make sure cables are mechanically protected and tied up and a main fuse on the battery leads is unnecessary. We don't know what caused the fire, but I think it is unlikely to have been the original wiring as if it was there would be more cases. Almost always electrical fires are caused by accessories, and looking at the wiring an auto electrician did on mine, I'm not suprised!! Thats why I'm doing my own now!

 

[Dave2000]

Thanks @Richard Turner for putting those pictures up mate, I use a similar system, the original design has been seen on the 4x4 ML Mercedes.

The version I use are these https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/battery-terminal-clamp-for-cube-fuses.html

These have the advantage that the nut is a steel 'nyloc' style, I note that it has been recommended to fuse the negative line, I do not agree with that if a dual battery system is installed, most installations that have a VSR (or switchable relay) could have both battery positive's decoupled however BOTH batteries would be sharing a common earth, so now that is two fuses being presented with the short circuited load, even if only one battery is being shorted, so double the amperage would be needed to break the circuit...does that sound right or am I missing something ?

EDIT: My error, I flicked through and misunderstood the placement of fuse and not isolator on the neg terminal, having said that, my comments with regards to linked batteries would still apply. Also as I use marine based design batteries, there are four connections on each battery, difficult to put isolators on two negatives for each battery.

Regards

Dave

 

[Dave2000]

I’m curious therefore as to the value of putting the fuse there in general.

Ordinarily I would not have fused the starter cable, it's position in the engine bay means it is very well protected. My concern was not to have the battery linking cables clipped across the fan cowling as per the typical 24 volt 80, having an electric engine cooling fan means I have no cowling there anyway, the OE position almost certainly chosen to protect the cables from a front end collision.

My two battery cables pos and neg both run under the front edge of the slam panel, very neat and tidy however, they are inside a panel that would bear the brunt of a front end collision, the fuses at each end of the cable would (should)
fail if a cable got pinched, the starter cable connection was purely on a whim as it connects at the same point.

Regards

Dave