Cable Install - Battery compartments

Here you can see the location of the two separated battery compartments on the 190V. The door in front of the wheel well is the forward battery compartment. The skirting behind the wheel well comes off to reveal the rear battery compartment.

Above is the 4 ⁄ 0 cabling that connects the front and rear batteries in parallel. These are run closely together and firmly secured to the frame of the van. You can see a little of the actual cable peeking through the 3⁄4 inch flexible split wire loom, which is covering each cable. I used flexible metal plumbers strapping wrapped in electrical tape to secure the cables to the frame.

This is the front battery compartment. Because the compartment is so low, there wasn't enough room to allow two 4 / 0 cables to be stacked on the same battery terminal (it became too high that way).

To solve this problem, I made up a short "bussbar" to allow connection of the second cable. I made the bussbar by flattening a 4 ⁄ 0 straight lug (the same ones I used for the cable ends) with a sledge hammer, then drilling a second hole for the other stainless steel cable bolt. One cable runs up to the T-fuse in the compartment below the toilet. The other cable runs to the rear battery, connecting the two batteries in parallel.

The rear battery compartment had enough room to allow placing two cables on each terminal. The yellow object attached to the negative terminal on the right is the temperature sensor for the charger (not used in my latest configuration). Also notice that both batteries are placed in the compartments so that the terminals are closer to the outside, opposite of the way the original batteries were placed. I found I had to do this because the cables are so thick, they don't have enough flexibility to be pushed all the way back once connected to the terminals. You can only push the trays in or out by a few inches. So you basically have to hook up the battery cables to the batteries with the batteries pretty much in place. (This is as far as you can pull the rear tray out with the cables attached. The front one is even worse.) I glued some cork insulation to the battery compartment roof above the positive terminal on the left to help prevent any accidental contact between the positive cables and the metal battery compartment when hooking up the cables.

This is the 200 Amp T-fuse inside a custom made holder. I used a 1 1⁄4 inch plumbers union with end adapters that would accept a 1 inch strain relief clamp. (It was fun browsing through Lowes plumbing department trying to find something that would work.) This assembly is located just in front of the right rear bumper, where I secured it with the adjustable clamp.