Upgrading The Electrical Power Distribution
When the project was originally conceived, space was limited due to the the technology available at that time as well as the plethora of equipment that was being installed. One of the goals of the original build was to redistribute some weight with the desired effect being the lowering of center of gravity even with the increase of ride height. One of the ways this was accomplished was by having an enclosure fabricated to hold the two batteries under the bed of the truck. While this served its purpose, it also made accessing the batteries a huge pain. It definitely helps owning a business engaged in emergency vehicle upfitting. Having access to wholesale vendors of the materials necessary is a huge step up from doing this in a pole barn with limited resources.
I decided to re-purpose the forward storage compartment on the passenger’s side to be the new power distribution center. To do so, a lot of work was required to relocate the batteries and modernize the distribution of current. The old constant duty relay used to keep the batteries isolated was discarded in favor of a new high tech, completely solid state isolation system from Power-Gate. The new configuration also required fabrication of several new power and ground cables. In the past, I had relied on Wrangler Power Products. This time around I decided to create the cables myself. Investing in a hydraulic cable crimper, I was able to measure, cut and create finished cables quickly with professional results in short order. The trick working with 1/0 gauge welding cable is ensuring the terminals are in the correct orientation when they are crimped. If they are not oriented correctly, the only option is starting over. These cables are much to resistant to twisting to be forced into place without causing some serious deformation in the cable. As the saying goes, “measure twice, cut once”. In the end, it comes down to paying attention to details.