Hacking Big Cables

Work was pretty quiet today with the July 4th holiday in the middle of the week, so I took the afternoon off to work on some of the high-current cables.


Here are two of the PowerPosts that I purchased yesterday from West Marine. The one on the right is the most-negative terminal and the one on the left is the placeholder for the high-current shunt that ElectroAuto hasn't sent yet. I used 10-32 bolts to hold these in, but the bolt heads were larger than the recess in the plastic, so I'll have to go out and get 10-32 allen-head screws with a smaller head to fit these without cracking the plastic.


Here is the mounting place for the motor speed control box that I re-wired yesterday. Putting it up on this panel gets it out of the way; however, I'll have to make sure that it doesn't interfere with the targa-top when it's in the rear trunk.


I've drilled two 1-inch holes in the rear trunk floor to route the high-current battery cables from the PowerPosts shown above to the motor controller. The rubber grommets are a bit larger than the cable, but that will work out fine since the cables have heat shrink tubing on them.


Since I purchased the 2/0 welding cable in a 20-foot length and a 25-foot length, I have to be careful to make sure I use them efficiently for all the necessary long cables in the instructions.
I don't have a long workbench, but the front hall and a long tape-measure works just fine.


As I mentioned before, I'm replacing the #2 gauge cable provided in the kit with a thicker 2/0 welding cable. I'm still a cheapskate and will still use the #2 gauge lugs with 5/16" holes provided in the kit. This requires me to use some small diagonal cutters to cut off several of the outer strands so that the inner cable strands fit inside the crimp connector. This shows my first crimp with the large crimping tool I borrowed from Gary. I forgot to squirt Noalox in this first connector, so I'll be careful to watch it. Fortunately, I used Noalox on all subsequent crimp connections.


Here's the same crimp above with black adhesive shrink tubing on it.


Here are the high current cables attached to the power posts in the engine compartment. I coded the most-positive terminal with red adhesive shrink-tubing.


Here are the cables again under the rear trunk going up through the grommets earlier. I plan to clamp all these cables up to support posts before actually running the car.


Here are the high-current cables (with crimp connectors) bolted onto the motor controller terminals with a heavy dose of Noalox gooping them up.


Here's the motor controller with the high-current wiring all attached and ready to go.


The instructions call for adding flexguard to the DMOC wiring harness to keep things clean. I unplugged the connector, fitted it through the 2" hole and added the flexguard.


Here's the wiring harness connector back through the 2" hole and plugged into the motor controller.


This is the most-positive power post terminal inside the fuel compartment on the driver's side ready for cable attachment from the front batteries.

That was quite a bit of work for today. I might continue work tomorrow morning and add the wires to the fuse box before going to work if I feel motivated. Cheers.