Battery Wiring

[John_Doe666]

I am the owner of a 2002 20v with dual batteries. I recently undid the wires off of the batteries and now don't know how the wiring is supposed to go. Can anyone please do a rough diagram? One of the batteries has 5 cables going to it and I dont know which cable goes to which. They are all done with black casing. Any help would be much appreciated.

Edit: Woops. Found another cable. Now I have 5 black cables and one red. One of the black cables has a red fitting on it.
Edit2: Here is an image of the wires:

[R&T Babich]

The very large cables, 2 or 4 gauge, should be red (+) & black (-). The red should go to the starter and the black will be bolted to the engine block.

On our boat (red, +12v), one of the smaller gauge wires was for the dash/ignition switch, another for the bilge pump, third for compartment lights. There should be a lead from the alternator, too.

I think the bilge and lights had ground leads (black, -) to the battery.

When you do figure out where the wires go get a couple of electrical bus bars to connect them together and run just one cable to the battery posts. It will reduce corrosion of the connectors. I added shut-off switches for the batteries and connected all the positive leads at the switches. The negative bus bar was connected with a new ground lead to the block.

[lee]

The red jacket cable goes to the positive side and the black jacket cables go to the negative side of the battery. Looks like you have one red and five black. You should have a brown wire with a stripe on it for the automatic bilge that would go to the positive side also.

[samw]

Welcome, you must now sell your boat. Your out of the club....Leave

Just kidding.

Should be pretty easy red=positive Black=Negative. As long as who ever did the wiring you put your red on the + terminal and all your blacks on the - terminal and you should be good to go. Unless I am missing something?

Side note you may also see this noted a few times here on the site. I have made the same mistake take something apart. Hmmmm how did that go? With age a digital camera take a pic before you take apart=all good when you want to put it together.
Just my 2

Good luck.

[laserfish]

You will also want to zip tie the cables together once you figure it all out. That way this won't happen again. We all feel your pain.

[John_Doe666]

Thanks you guys.
My main problem was that one wire that was black but had the red end on it (far right). I got everything else connected and it looks like that wire is the ground wire for my amp. Got them all hooked up and it rode beautifully this weekend.