grounding block

Is there anything wrong with making a grounding block out of a 1/4 inch thick strip of aluminium for ground wires behind dash. Nav lights , stereo, Bilge pump, and a few cabin lights. etc?

Re: grounding block

No problem with the aluminum for a grounding block. Just make sure the main wire back to the battery is big enough to support the load of all the stuff wired to the grounding strip.

If you end up also making another strip for the positive side make sure it is fully covered so nothing can hit it and cause a spark. also use a fused link for each wire off the positive strip.

Re: grounding block

Boatist said:

No problem with the aluminum for a grounding block. Just make sure the main wire back to the battery is big enough to support the load of all the stuff wired to the grounding strip.

If you end up also making another strip for the positive side make sure it is fully covered so nothing can hit it and cause a spark. also use a fused link for each wire off the positive strip.

Click to expand...

best to use a commercial block for positive. For the negative, even a big bolt will work, just depends on how fancy/simple/clean you want it to look.

For positive, especially if a metal hull, you have a lot of hoops to jump through to make sure you are not leaking power to the hull of the boat. you can get some pretty inexpensive, covered, posssitive bars even at the auto parts stores.

Re: grounding block

I have proper spade fuse blocks for the positive so I am ok. The reason I asked the question about the aluminum is I am installing a battery switch and made a positive buss bar out of a 1/8 inch thick by one inch wide strip of brass to connect to the comm terminal from the battery switch. I went to a battery store a they didnt have anything that would work. I have 6 wires that need to go to the positive and didnt want to stuff them all inside the switch. Plus it will make it easer to dosconnect things without removing the switch each time. I have it nicely protected with plastic so it should work well. Anyways when I asked the battery guys about making such a thing they said not to use aluminum which I have lots of. So I made it out of brass. I can post a pic of it if anyone wants to see it.

Thanks for the help

Re: grounding block

I'd be looking for somthing besides aluminum. Aluminum has a large expansion range and over time connections tend to loosen up, plus it corrodes.

Brass would be way better