Quick release car battery terminal

[HelenA2035]

    Hello friends, I hope you can help me out. I have a remade wiring loom but can't work out how to connect it to the car battery. The positive terminal on the car has a quick release clamp with nowhere to connect the wire that leads to the orion and the leisure battery set up (which is a small connector). I saw a youtube video from micro camper conversions where he connected to one of the other live points on the battery - I tried that (without connecting anything else up mind you) and the car wouldn't start. I thought that if I just connected a wire without anything else it would just sit there quietly till I connect things to it. So do I change the main battery terminal, the connector on the wire, or will it all spring into life when I connect everything up? I'll add a pic. Micro camper conversions connected to the connector with the yellow tape - although his had a direct wire from the positive terminal and I don't. 

Hope someone can help!

[Guanock]

Hi.
Looking at your photo, you appear to have a whole bunch of positive connections to choose from. It is the negative that has no obvious options, but any good earth point will suffice for that.

Geoff

[HelenA2035]

Hi.
Looking at your photo, you appear to have a whole bunch of positive connections to choose from. It is the negative that has no obvious options, but any good earth point will suffice for that.

Geoff

Thanks Geoff. The wires connected towards the back appear to have fuses incorporated - do I need to decide based on that or will any do?

[Sol]

Hi, the ones with fuses have dedicated functions so ideally, don't mess with those, you could leave yourself stranded if one blows. The list is attached for that connector plate. 

You can piggy-back off the large bolted terminals on the bottom right, but don't leave a wire flapping that is connected to that part unless it is protected by an inline fuse rated at less than the wire it feeds, and hooked up to the load or otherwise insulated at the other end, as the plate there is a raw live from the battery and can make enough current to weld steel, if allowed to short to the metalwork around it. Those two bolted cables on the bottom right of your picture are raw battery live connections, non-fused & high power.

If you want to use one of the fuse positions which is not already in use, then go ahead but it still must be protected by a fuse what ever you do. If you add something to an existing fuse and blow that fuse, then you risk a fault which may not allow you to start the vehicle. All of the ones on the list below are critical to the operation of the vehicle except maybe one. The empty ones, you are free to use but need to fit a complimentary fuse to use it.

if unsure, then don't mess with it, go to an auto electrician. Car batteries can easily make fires start with wiring which is not protected, properly rated or poorly routed.

[HelenA2035]

Hi, the ones with fuses have dedicated functions so ideally, don't mess with those, you could leave yourself stranded if one blows. The list is attached for that connector plate. 

You can piggy-back off the large bolted terminals on the bottom right, but don't leave a wire flapping that is connected to that part unless it is protected by an inline fuse rated at less than the wire it feeds, and hooked up to the load or otherwise insulated at the other end, as the plate there is a raw live from the battery and can make enough current to weld steel, if allowed to short to the metalwork around it. Those two bolted cables on the bottom right of your picture are raw battery live connections, non-fused & high power.

If you want to use one of the fuse positions which is not already in use, then go ahead but it still must be protected by a fuse what ever you do. If you add something to an existing fuse and blow that fuse, then you risk a fault which may not allow you to start the vehicle. All of the ones on the list below are critical to the operation of the vehicle except maybe one. The empty ones, you are free to use but need to fit a complimentary fuse to use it.

if unsure, then don't mess with it, go to an auto electrician. Car batteries can easily make fires start with wiring which is not protected, properly rated or poorly routed.

Thanks Zion for a really helpful and comprehensive reply. I might try no 8 or 9 on the diagram. 

When I connected up the first time I used the left hand bolted cable with the yellow tape on it at the bottom of the pic. My wire wasn't connected up - I had taken the fuse out of the fuse holder as a precaution - you can see the in line fuse box on the upper right of the pic - but I didn't know why the battery would register a fault on the dash and the car wouldn't start. Maybe I should try to use it when I connect up to the orion and the leisure battery then?  And then if it still isn't happy I could try another terminal like the 8 or 9?

[Sol]

It's odd but likely it didn't start as you had interfered with the original connection to the point it couldn't work. So like an insulated material under the bolt head or not tight enough. A loose nut on there will kill the fusebox power to a few volts and nothing will work.

The battery is a Goliath in terms of current, being able to put out 400A of raw power into a good connection, but at 12v, these systems also suffer badly from a poor connection, even slightly poor will do it, reducing the voltage to a fraction of the original 12v. Make sure there is only a clean metal ring terminal crimp under the nut if using one of these bolted connectors and do it up tight.

That way you don't lose the original function of the bolted cables, to a slack or otherwise poor contact.

It's a high current cable; if you trapped the end of another smaller wire under the washer, you severely reduce the contact area of the original connection and render it useless.

[HelenA2035]

It's odd but likely it didn't start as you had interfered with the original connection to the point it couldn't work. So like an insulated material under the bolt head or not tight enough. A loose nut on there will kill the fusebox power to a few volts and nothing will work.

The battery is a Goliath in terms of current, being able to put out 400A of raw power into a good connection, but at 12v, these systems also suffer badly from a poor connection, even slightly poor will do it, reducing the voltage to a fraction of the original 12v. Make sure there is only a clean metal ring terminal crimp under the nut if using one of these bolted connectors and do it up tight.

That way you don't lose the original function of the bolted cables, to a slack or otherwise poor contact.

It's a high current cable; if you trapped the end of another smaller wire under the washer, you severely reduce the contact area of the original connection and render it useless.

That makes sense - it was fixed as soon as I removed it. Thanks for all your help.