A LITTLE TOUCH UP

Work on land has kept BIANKA in port and only allowed me time on the weekends to be on board. Happily, that situation will soon end. In the meantime I keep myself busy on board taking care of small projects here and there of which there is no end. A recent item was securing some of the meters at the helm instrumentation panel.

I use it to monitor the battery voltages and current for the 48 volt propulsion bank. I cut the panel using a hand nibbler and dremel tool and some of the meters turned out to be have a little looser fit than I planned. One meter was starting to work its self out so it was time to secure it.

After removing the six screws that held the waterproof cover of the panel I had easy access to the meters. I also noticed a few scratches from the first install on the painted panel front

I used a little Marine GOOP to re secure it back into the panel. Since I had the cover open I retouched some of the scratches on the front panel using a black Sharpie Permanent Marker:

The Sharpie touch up worked well and I soon had the cover on the instrumentation panel ready to mount it back at it's helm position and could move on to the next project.

SOLAR BIMINI REWIRE

Tweet I installed the completed solar bimini on BIANKA back in 2010 though I did not finish posting about it until 2012. At the time I did a quick job of connecting the 48 volt Kanaka panels to the  Morningstar ProStar PS-15M-48V Charge Controller using the connectors that came with the panels to get the system up and running. In this case it was using  spade lugs connected to a two screw barrier strip and then down to the controller. I taped the whole thing in some electrical tape. This worked fine for awhile and it was always my intention to make things a little neater and more weatherproof at some point. Well, that project got moved up on the list this spring when I saw this:

I found that one of the solar panel connections had corroded and broken away from the spade lug.  

Indeed all the connections showed severe corrosion issues. Definitely time to replace this "temporary" setup. So that's what I did. I've mentioned before I really like Anderson Powerpole Connectors   for a lot of connections on board for a number of reason. One is they have wiping contacts that help clean the contact surface when connecting and disconnecting. Plus they are compact and can be ganged together. Another advantage is they have color coded cases available:

Since I'll be connecting 48 volt solar panels it is a good idea to follow the Anderson color code for their Power Poles. For 48 volts the recommended color is blue. I used it above for the positive 48 volt panel connection. This helps avoid confusion with the 12 volt panels that are also part of BIANKA's solar bimini.
Another thing with Anderson Powerpoles it is also easy to make up "two fer" cable harnesses so that in this case I can connect two separate solar panels to the same solar charge controller. This ability to quickly connect and disconnect the connectors helps in troubleshooting or taking voltage and current measurements of the panels.

As is the Anderson Power Poles are not particularly waterproof. So what I usually do is fill the back end of the connectors (where the wire enters) with Marine GOOP and then cover that with some electrical tape. Another wrap of electrical tape around the connector case joint ensures even more protection from moisture.    
With the new connections more waterproof than my previous installation I should not have to revisit this area of my electric propulsion charging system for long time.

Tweet

INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART 9: CONNECTIONS

The battery end of the project has been wired up with fuses and Anderson connectors. The helm meter panel like wise has been wired and tested. So the only thing that remains is to connect the two with wires. There are four meters each monitoring one of the four 12 volt batteries in the 48 volt electric propulsion string. I thought about individual wires in a harness, duplex wire and various other cable types. Happily I found what I needed in a trash bin that fit my needs perfectly.
    I was doing some freelance work in a building that was undergoing some renovation and found about fifty feet of E90298 cable made by National Wire about to be thrown out. It had ten 20 AWG wires inside a durable UV resistant cover.  It even had a shield around the bundled wires. The wires were also tinned making it perfect for the marine environment on board as it would be more resistant to corrosion than bare copper. Best of all I could not beat the price FREE! I love to recycle where I can and this cable instead ending up in a landfill  is perfect for the instrumentation project interconnection.

I love it when a plan comes together like this. Because I only needed eight wires to measure the four individual battery voltages it meant I had two spare wires that I might use down the road for something. The only issue I thought might be a problem is each of the 10 wires in the harness were different colors. Which could be confusing down the road in trying to figure out which wire was positive or negative when connecting or trouble shooting. But this was easily solved after I first assigned the color coded wires to each battery:

Because of the various colors used to connect the batteries I decided to cover each wire with two different colored heat shrink at the battery end. Red for the wires that went to the positive battery terminals and black for wires that went to the negative battery terminals. These would help avoid confusion and mis-connections even though the Anderson Powerpole connectors where color coded. It just adds helps eliminate confusion. It would also add another layer of protection for the wires:

.I also put on some  General Purpose 1/4-inch Braided Cable Sleeve over the heat shrinked wires. This not only kept the wires together making for neater wire runs but, also added another layer of protection to the wiring harness:

All I needed to do now was crimp on the Anderson Powerpole pins and insert them into the proper color coded powerpole housing and the battery end of the instrumentation project was done:

 For the helm end of wire I chose to enclose each pair of wires in white heat shrink:

and connect them to the helm panel meters box:

After an operations check out the project was just about complete. All that I needed to do was to add a little sealant to the back of the Anderson Powerpole connectors to water proof the wires and also inside and outside of the meter enclosure box where they connect up. I used Marine Goop. Once that was done it was time to move on to wiring the battery current meter.

INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART 8 CLICK HERE


INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART 10 CLICK HERE