Wire splicing example - dodgy or normal practice?

[erfwyl]

Greeting Esphere-farers,

I am rebuilding an Etrike that was poorly manufactured. I'm currently building a wiring circuit diagram of how the components connect with each each other and the controller. In unwrapping electricians tape from a tangle of green wires I found this tangle of battery negative wires spliced together. Is this standard practice or just cheap and nasty? Is there a professional, safe, best practice solution (eg a purpose designed connector) anyone can point me to?

 

[amberwolf]

I wouldn't have done it that way; at hte least I would have used heatshrink (probably self-adhesive marine type) rather than electrical tape (as the tape adhesive often decays and the tape then unwinds and falls off, leaving the connections unprotected).


There are a few possible ways to make multiple connections depending on what they're for, what connections to the battery are available, and what kind of space is available inside the area it's all located.

For instance, if the battery negative is a bolt-on type like those visible in the image, a longer bolt can be used, and a ring terminal crimped to each of those wires, and then rings stacked with the wires coming out in a "spiral staircase" to stack them all onto the bolt.

A busbar of one type or another could be bolted to the frame, and each of the wires soldered, bolted to, or plugged into it, and a single larger ground then connected from there to the battery negative. Some examples of screw terminal versions:

screw terminal bus - Google Search

and spade terminal versions:

spade terminal bus - Google Search

Etc.

There's ohter ways to do it too, depending on the reasons for all the separate grounds. (such as merging some grounds "locally" and sending them on as larger wires to the central location; I've done this on lighting setups on Crazybike2 and SB Cruiser that don't typically use the ground for all the lights at the same time (if there is *no* way they can use the ground at the same time, you can use just the original size of wire for a single ground from both)).