Battery After 20 Hour Capacity Test = 95.69Ah Capacity For this test I wanted to: Show the relationship of loaded voltage to SOC on a popular lead acid battery. Utilize a battery not in perfect health to represent real world. Show why using a generic voltage to SOC [...]
A Deep Cycle Battery Assassin The alternator pictured here helped to destroy a very expensive bank of TPPL AGM batteries in under two years. These batteries need an absorption voltage of 14.7V. The highest voltage I recorded on this vessel was 13.58V at the battery terminals. At this [...]
Solar MC4 Connectors These are solar MC4 connectors the FEMALE in on the bottom and the MALE plug is on top.. Today more and more solar panels are shipping with MC4 terminals and less and less with actual junction boxes. I still personally prefer a water tight j-box, [...]
Rudder Position Sensor - Radial Drive Close Up In this picture you can see the steering systems radial drive and the Starboard shim I fabricated in order to attach the rudder position sensor to the radial drive. A rudder position sensor is really just an autopilot system transducer. [...]
Anode Installation I recently came from a customer’s boat after doing a winterizing and while there I noticed the anode (zinc in this case) on the $3500.00 prop was not connected to anything, other than by friction. Sadly I see this far too often. With this fresh on [...]
Note The Melting of The Battery Case The connections to your batteries matter. How you make them, how you torque them and how clean they are all matter. Not following best practices or marine wiring standards can impact your personal safety. While doing a winterization, and getting ready [...]
Engine Panel With Ammeter = Dangerous If your Universal engine panel looks like this, and has an ammeter, you are due for some critically important wiring upgrades. The factory wiring, with an ammeter in the panel, is flat out dangerous and this wiring mess really needs to be [...]
The Stock Alternator Many boats, specifically sailboats, come equipped with, or have have used, the 5" small-case Motorola/Prestolite/Leece-Neville style alternator. There are literally thousands of these out there. This style alternator is now being manufactured by Leece-Neville. The 8MR series, pictured here, are specifically marinized to meet USCG [...]
Remove The Pulley This article takes a look inside a typical Mitsibishi/Westerbeke 50A alternator. These are tiny little work horses that can suitably handle charging small battery banks. An alternator like this is not designed to charge massive house banks but if you day sail and are most [...]
Pick Your Crimp Tool I own both the Ancor hammer crimper and the FTZ 94284. The FTZ 94284 makes a beautiful 360 degree crimp that is very solid. In testing which I've conducted an FTZ made crimp exceeds US MIL Specs. A full 360 degree crimp makes a [...]
If You Don't Know How to Solder..... If you really don't know how to solder a VHF PL259 connector there are other options as you'll see below. This one is laughable, except that when this owner needed his VHF it was no joke or laughing matter that it [...]
Old Transducer Coax Cable Preface: This article assumes you're vessel is not yet into the 21st century with regard to your marine electronics and that you're not using NMEA 2000 transducers. It's mid season, your boat is in the water, and your old depth sounder dies. What are [...]
A SmartPlug Kit DISCLAIMER: I consider this article is very serious in nature and I believe so much in the safety aspect of this article that I will not and do not sell SmartPlug products via this site (please stop asking). I do not want any confusion over [...]
A Look at Voltage Transients in Marine Electrical Systems I had been meaning to put this together for a while and assembled a system for a training class I was doing. Once that was assembled I realized I could simply add a starter motor, an oscilloscope and a [...]
Marine Wire Termination - The Tools PREFACE: This article is long and rather detailed. It is written in two parts and covers crimp tooling, terminal selection, types of terminals and includes plenty of do's & don'ts. The first part covers heat shrink terminals and then goes over insulated [...]
LiFePO4 On Boats I have had so many requests to open this article I have decided to remove the password protection. Please understand this article is a LONG way from being done but there is still a LOT of information. An article like this takes lots of time [...]
