Hardwiring battery charger

Alkers

Hi there, I have a Mazda Bongo camper which gets infrequent enough use.

It has a 240v hook-up system with it's own fuse board etc so there are two 3-pin sockets in the van.

I want to be able to charge the 12v batteries when I am connected to hook-up so that I can charge the batteries when at a campsite and also so I can use the proper cable at home in place of an extension lead and crocodile clips onto the battery.

I have one of the lidl/aldi battery chargers which is fine for my needs. I have mounted this within the cabin (where I can plug it in as needed), cut off the crocodile clips and ran the cables through to the battery but I am struggling to find a way to connect it to the battery as any suitably sized ring connectors I can find are way too large to accommodate the very thin cables coming from the charger.

Has anyone found a good way of wiring up cables to the battery to make hooking up a charger easier?

I have something similar on my motorcycles but the rings are far too small for the van battery: https://www.motorcycleshop.ie/optimate-sae71-01-weatherproof-connection-lead-2063-p.asp

two wheels good

Change the battery connector for one with an acc bolt.
Connect the pos elsewhere - fuseboard live supply, solenoid switch?
Connect the earth lead to earth point somewhere.
Insert some cable in the ring connector to take up the gap and heatshrink it well.

Alkers

two wheels good wrote: »

Insert some cable in the ring connector to take up the gap and heatshrink it well.

Good idea, had never thought of that - should work!

Melodeon

What size are the clamping nuts/bolts on your battery terminals?
Ordinary Red/Blue/Yellow crimp terminals are available all the way up to 10mm/13mm:
https://www.automarinecables.com/accessories/details.cfm?id=275

Alkers

Melodeon wrote: »

What size are the clamping nuts/bolts on your battery terminals?
Ordinary Red/Blue/Yellow crimp terminals are available all the way up to 10mm/13mm:
https://www.automarinecables.com/accessories/details.cfm?id=275

There are large terminals and then also smaller threaded ones so easy enough to get a ring connector to fit, just the cables were too thing for any I had lying around. Will try find some for thin cables or just use spare wire to fill the gap in the connector.

Thanks

Alkers

two wheels good wrote: »

Insert some cable in the ring connector to take up the gap and heatshrink it well.

Just to follow up, this is exactly what I did.

Original cable:


Alongside spare piece of cable:


I taped the two cables together, wound the charger cable around the spare cable piece and then crimped the ring connector on it.

Heatshrink before I heated it:


Job's a good one!

NBar

Buy a Ctek battery maintance/charger and it will maintain the battery properly over long periods parked up

https://www.ctek.com/