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Date:         Wed, 10 Jan 2018 12:48:35 -0800
Reply-To:     Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Subject:      Re: Multi Conductor Shielded Automotive Wire Temperature Rating
Comments: To: Neil N <musomuso@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To:  <CAB2RwfgQ2hq27Q6Upw1m_qq=mn7Ub70H0KopuZ4uXi_muCDz-A@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

On 1/10/2018 11:06 AM, Neil N wrote: > Aviation applications. Of course! Thats great. Thank you.

You bet. I know it's overkill in a flippin' Vanagon, but it's not that expensive, and the skills aren't hard to learn.

> ... it looks like they all terminate at the multi > contact connector at engine block.

Right. In my Vanagon I installed a ground farm from B&C under the driver's seat:

http://www.bandc.aero/grounding-supplies-battery-cables.aspx

The big camping battery is inside the sink cabinet, a few inches away since I drilled a big hole for the heavy + and - cables. The battery - cable is connected right to the big bolt on the ground farm.

In homebuilt aircraft, that bolt is intended to go through the firewall to a ground farm on both sides of the firewall, so there's one ground point for absolutely everything. I didn't drill through the van's floor, but instead grounded the ground farm to the van's body through a separate short wire.

I run dedicated grounds from each of the 12V outlets to that ground farm.

https://sbw.org/westybattery/

The audio shields are grounded at the radio, and I haven't yet installed a dedicated ground wire from the radio to the ground farm. I'd have to either isolate the radio from the van's frame or run a fairly large ground wire to close ground loops. Because I haven't done that, audio from the cell phone (music, audiobooks, maps), playing through a stereo cable plugged into the radio, is sometimes noisy when the cell phone is plugged into the 12V outlet: a classic ground loop.

To eliminate that noise, the easiest way to isolate the radio is to replace it with a radio that has Bluetooth! The radio's speaker outputs are isolated by design, so the speaker wire's shield is grounded to the radio.

I also installed a fuse farm from B&C under the driver's seat for all the camping electrics:

http://www.bandc.aero/fuseholder6-slot.aspx

Note that has tabs for spade lugs, which are always better than ring lugs: Lower parts count (no screws and washers) and a gas-tight connection with no process sensitivity. (That is, you can fail to tighten the screw in a ring lug, or get it cross-threaded, or forget the washer, or whatever. None of those mistakes can happen with a spade lug.)


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