say for instance you have a large battery bank (as I do) 4 on one side of the boat and 4 on the other. I was told that you should hve all your power wires (to subs/distro blocks/etc) connected to one side and the grounds on the other side. a "battery" guy told me I should do it like this because it makes it look (electricaly) like one huge battery to whatever's pulling power from it. make sense? any truth to that? <BR>mike

as in pos to pos, neg to neg? if so, yes there is some truth to that.

yes, its' called connecting in parallel. <BR> <BR>What other way would you connect 12v batteries? <BR> <BR>FYI, you can adjust the rail voltage on some amps to accpet higher voltages.

Why would you want to have 2 huge battery banks. You would be way better off to have one huge battery bank with a single starting battery that is separate. I don't think that would make the 2 banks in parallel. It just mean that your stereo crap is running off the bank with the positive and grounded to the other. <BR> <BR>If you want the whole system to be one bank you would hook each of the batteries on each side pos to pos and neg to neg. then run long 2/0 or bigger cables from the pos of one bank to pos of the other and the same with the negs.

i dont think i was clear enough about that. it is one huge battery bank all connected together +to+ -to- all 8 connected together in parallel. what i ment was with that big bank should you use a positive from one side and the ground from the other side. for example 4 batteries are on the right side of the motor and 4 in the storage locker on the left side. should the positive come from the left side and ground the right side.

are you asking if the wire (+/-) should be run down opposite sides of the boat?

I don't think it really matters where you take the pos and neg from as long as you have sufficient cable between all the batteries. What size cable are you using as jumpers?

mike, there is two terminals on a battery. one pos and one neg. You could run positives on the right negatives on the left. but then you would have nothing, because you haven't closed the loop. I guess you would a lot of built-in ballast...

Nacho, I don't think that is what he meant. If I am reading this right he has 4 batteries on each side of the motor. All 8 are ran in parallel by connecting all positives together and all negative together. He is asking if it is ok to for example run the stereo equipment main cables(one pos, one neg) from one of the batteries on the left side or if it is better to run the positive for the stereo stuff from one side and the negative from the other. <BR> <BR>As far as getting the power to a busbar/distribution block I don't think it matters. However I am not sure if it affects the stereo signal or anything. Personally I think I would just run them from/down one side and cover them in convoluted tubing.

Brett, that was my understanding. I believe he wants to know is it better to run it as the setup shown on the left or the right. <BR> <BR>I personally don't think it matters. Once you run them in parallel it is treated as one big battery <BR><img src="http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/65921/587247.jpg" alt="Upload">

Electrically it is the same point and offers no benefits.

^^^^^+1

yea cory caught my drift 100%. thanks for the answer guys