Misterclean 406 Posted December 4, 2019 As some of you may remember a few weeks ago I asked about hardware availability for a custom harness. Well I built it yesterday and installed it yesterday evening. Specifically, I needed to put a battery maintainer on five batteries and didn't want to spend a small fortune on four more Battery tenders. Because my Battery tender usually shows the green light (which indicates a full charge) ,I reasoned that it could maintain several more at the same time.......it does. I hooked it up to two TRX 420's, my riding mower, my Yamaha scooter and a spare automotive battery for my wife's horse trailer. This morning the green light was on indicating a full charge! Whoo Hoo!,. I bought a 50 foot extension cord for $15 at my local True value hardware store.and soldered it together. First I installed a 120 receptical in the rafters so my tender would be out of the way. Then strung out about 16 feet of extension cord and attached it to the rafters too. Then dropped five cords down on top of each machine where they are normally parked. Each drop has it's own special end to accommodate each battery's needs. The four wheelers have permanent pig tails attached to their batteries so their drop had the opposite quick connect to make it easy to unplug. The scooter and rider have small alligator clips for their terminals and the spare automotive battery has a set of larger clips. The harness looks like a cheap Redneck did the work but functions well enough for me. It cost approx. $30 and several hours of my time. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jeepwm69 7,212 Posted December 4, 2019 You know the rules Misterclean! WE NEED PICS. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 4, 2019 Jeep, my pride won't allow me to post pictures of my mess.......let me think about this a little.......maybe, maybe not LOL 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 4, 2019 Plus my phone doesn't post easily for me. I always log in from my laptop from work. Using my phone usually takes me much longer than I like. LOL Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jeepwm69 7,212 Posted December 4, 2019 Shoot me some pics via email then! My username here @yahoo.com. I don't care if it's ugly if it works. I have about a dozen batteries in and right outside my shop that need tenders on them, so sounds like you have a solution, right down to the part about putting it in the rafters with drop downs. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
toodeep 1,732 Posted December 4, 2019 I can about imagine what he did and there would have been a couple ways to do it depending on the layout of parking spaces. Either run the cord over to a junction and drop the 5 leads down or run the cord the length and have 5 different junctions tapped into it at various locations dropping down. Each battery could be individually charged if just one was plugged in or the group would be maintained with them all fully charged and plugged in. Only question is, what color of extension cord.. lol 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 4, 2019 1 hour ago, toodeep said: I can about imagine what he did and there would have been a couple ways to do it depending on the layout of parking spaces. Either run the cord over to a junction and drop the 5 leads down or run the cord the length and have 5 different junctions tapped into it at various locations dropping down. Each battery could be individually charged if just one was plugged in or the group would be maintained with them all fully charged and plugged in. Only question is, what color of extension cord.. lol Orange. LOL Two black leads with the quick disconnect type because they were assemblies. Again....ugly. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fishfiles 19,707 Posted December 4, 2019 I was picturing orange in my head ..... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riverc 1,092 Posted December 4, 2019 Hey looks like you got it rigged,who cares what it looks like if it works,and won't burn the garage down lol. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
retro 3,871 Posted December 4, 2019 Sounds like a winner to me. Who cares what it looks like as long as it works? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 5, 2019 I took some pics in my barn of the harness and then took some pics of some models that I built for clarity but my phone wouldn't let me log in. My password was incorrect and now I'm locked out for 14 minutes. I'm not sure what the problem is but my laptop is fine. Anyway.......let me explain what I did in case my phone doesn't allow me access to the forum. My plan was to splice into an uncut run of wire that ran the length of the harness to each machine/battery and strip the insulation away from an uncut wire leaving about one inch of bare wire so i could solder my drops at a ninety degree tee down to each machine/battery. That seemed too time consuming so I ended up cutting the wire and splicing my drops that way. The was an ugly choice because instead of a clean ninety degree drop I ended up with three wires soldered and taped parallel to each other. This junction requires two of the three wires to loop down and away from their bundled connection. One looped down to the battery and the other makes an even harder loop 180 degrees back the other way to the next drop. I used heat shrink where I could and taped the junctions heavily because I didn't want the weight of the drops to break after years of hanging from the rafters. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 5, 2019 I hope the log in problem repaired. Let me try to download the pics. Ok good. Looks like two were successfully downloaded. These are just some models that I made quickly just to demonstrate the idea. One shows the drop tied in as a tee. This requires a little patience because the insulation needs to be stripped without cutting the wire. I recommend this version because I actually did the version in the other pic and regret it. It is ugly but quicker to do. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jeepwm69 7,212 Posted December 6, 2019 And on the end of the orange wire you put a quick connect to hook to the tender? 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Misterclean 406 Posted December 6, 2019 19 minutes ago, jeepwm69 said: And on the end of the orange wire you put a quick connect to hook to the tender? Yes, or clips of any size. I made five drops. .......Two have the quick connects, two have small alligator clips and one has a medium clip for the automotive battery. You could put quick disconnects on every drop and install quick disconnect on every battery that is clipped......just solder the quick connect pig tail to the clips. This would be best but more expensive. I got impatient one afternoon and just threw it all together from what was easily available. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
