Battery cabling - take a picture, it will last longer than your memory

[Wayne]

I uncabled the batteries in our 5th wheel so that they could all be charged independently. Obviously, the cables have to be put back on correctly, so I took a couple pictures and stored them for later reference. When you are ready to hook them back up and you are thinking about how to connect four 6 volt batteries in series and parallel, it's not so obvious as it was a few months ago when you unhooked them.

 

[AutoMechanic]

Pictures are always a big help especially in unfamiliar territory. The first few times I done batteries in dad’s big rig I took pictures just to make sure I didn’t get them confused. Now I’m good at remembering where they go.

 

[MSCH]

yeah, I worked on buses most of my life. depended on what brand bus how nice they did with the battery setup.. some of them the only thing you could do wrong was put the batteries in backwards as the cables were manufactured to only go one way.. other brand were Roe V Wade territory.

looking at it, you could just disconnect the battery bridges on one end and charge across either of 2 sets of battery packs..

 

[Wayne]

looking at it, you could just disconnect the battery bridges on one end and charge across either of 2 sets of battery packs..

You could, but batteries often have slightly different internal resistance and won't charge correctly when paired. I ran into this exact problem and couldn't get the maintainer to charge at all until I charged the batteries individually.