I use an Accumate 6/12v charger permanently connected to the Box when in the garage but, obv
iously,
not when out on a Run. So this entails fitting a connector that can be
easily disconnected between car and charger. Firstly, the car end – I have
a twin cable wired directly onto the two battery terminals. This is so I
can switch off all the car’s electrics with a master switch to prevent a fire
when left but still allow the charger access to the battery. I have tried
several connectors to join the battery wires to the charger’s cable and have
come up with one that is small, easy to use and has a locking clip – a
“Disconnect Block 2-way” from Motobitz and Halfords. But the reason for
this little article is to prevent you, dear reader, from making the same mistake
that I made, entailing a second trip to Halfords as there are no instructions
and, to me, construction wasn’t obvious until I got it wrong!The connector body comes in two halves, obviously, with four little electrical male and female spade parts which are pushed into the connectors’ bodies. But this is
a one-way process as each electrical connector has a tang which lodges
inside the body once pushed in and can’t be pulled back out if you’ve got it
wrong. And I did! You can see from the photos that the male spades
go into the larger of the two halves and the female spades go into the half with
the lever catch on but, as a second check, the shapes of the holes in the two
halves are different too. You can also see I wasn’t taking any chances the
second time and made extensive use of a marker pen! Obviously you have to
connect the spades to the ends of your wires first before pushing them home but
be careful you get, say, the
positive wire straight through from the charger to the battery. I used
Tippex to paint the positive wires from both ends just to be sure. Don’t forget
– pushing in the little spades is a non-r
eversible
operation.