[zooks4life]

So I have an abr sidewinder dual battery system, it's meant for car to camper trailer use but I use it in the back so I can take it out when it's not in use. So where i unplug it the kit uses an Anderson plug and that's the part that's shepped. The only thing I done different was one of the negative wires came out, so I re crimped it and put it back in the Anderson plug. I turned the car on and I instantly had a read out of the battery charging but once I touched the Anderson plug it was boiling hot. Couldn't touch it for 5 minutes. I turned the car off at this stage. Once it became cold I tried to rip the Anderson plugs apart and they must of melted to each other but one of the positive wires fell out. I'm def not a car sparky by any stage, was it because the positive was falling out of one side of the Anderson plug? Was it because of dodgy crimping? Don't really wanna spend money at an auto electrician. I hope this makes sense. Cheers Brock

[Moag]

Lucky Brock!!!
Are both of your batteries fused?

What size anderson plug (50amp?), wire gauge (8?) and length of cable between the batteries (length of positive and negative)?

I suspect resistance may have been the cause of the meltdown of your plug.

So what were you using to crimp the anderson plug lugs with?

[zooks4life]

Anderson plug is a 50amp, wire guage is 8mm probably the length between would be 2 metres, it was a bit dodge but I was using a red, yellow, blue crimper and just jamming the end in. That was the only thing that had a changed from the last time I was using it to now was that one came loose so I crimped the shit out of it ( negative) and the positive on the 2nd battery side fell out after the event. There are two fuses but are before the Anderson plug but one is leading to the main battery and the other to the 2nd. Hope this helps

[zooks4life]

Anderson plug is a 50amp, wire guage is 8mm probably the length between would be 2 metres, it was a bit dodge but I was using a red, yellow, blue crimper and just jamming the end in. That was the only thing that had a changed from the last time I was using it to now was that one came loose so I crimped the shit out of it ( negative) and the positive on the 2nd battery side fell out after the event. There are two fuses but are before the Anderson plug but one is leading to the main battery and the other to the 2nd. Hope this helps

[Moag]

Yep those shitty crimper don't make real good connections!

So what happens with a lose, corroded or dirty connection is you get a build up of heat... through resistance, that's possibily part of your problem with the melted anderson plug.
You were lucky you found it before the whole lot went up in flames when the + & - contacted each other and those cables melted down.

I've crimped Anderson plugs before with a 8 ton hydraulic hexagonal crimper and still managed to pull the cable out with a descent yank, so I prefer to solder these in on anderson plugs.
Have you got a soldering iron or butane burner, some resin cored solder? I need to solder a anderson plug tommorow (not really) so can post up some pictures of how I do it if you like.

Ps. Get some spiral rap or corrugated conduct and protect all that wiring from any future dead shorts.

[fordem]

Let's not get carried away here, there are different sized Anderson connectors, and you don't need an 8 ton crimper for an Anderson SB50 (a hand crimper won't hack it either)

Also - for a high resistance connection to cause the sort of heat described, there would have to be a pretty heavy current flowing through the connector, way more that you would get just charging a battery - so I doubt it was a poor crimp that caused it, my suspicion is an incorrectly assembled Anderson connector - it is possible to reverse the contacts in the housing when inserting them.

[Benz]

shouldn't be possible to get them the wrong way around as they only fit one way.

just buy new plugs and solder them this time.

I find it easiest to use a vice to hold the bit you crimp/solder while you heat it up and fill it with hot solder.
once it is nice and hot and has a good amount of solder in there simply dunk your cable in and continue to heat it for a minute or so.
then let it cool and you should have a very sound connection =]

[fordem]

Benz wrote:

shouldn't be possible to get them the wrong way around as they only fit one way.

My guess is you've never had an Anderson connector apart - larger Andersons are usually two pole, smaller ones are single pole and can be snapped together to form multipole connectors. In the SB50 size, they consist of a plastic housing, two identical flat spings and two identical pins - either pin can fit in either hole.

Anderson connectors can only fit togther one way, but they can be assembled incorrectly.

If you're going to solder the pins I suggest you tin the conductors and heat them before "dunking" them into the molten solder in the pin - you'll get a better joint.

[Benz]

fordem wrote:

my suspicion is an incorrectly assembled Anderson connector - it is possible to reverse the contacts in the housing when inserting them.

didn't read that properly did I *face palm*
of course you can get them wrong when assembling them to start with.

yeah it's properly better to heat the cable first but I always found it very hard to get enough heat into everything.

recently did some huge ones and had to get a big gas torch to get the things hot enough.
was also using pretty heavy gauge finely stranded cable too.

the method I described was the only way I could do it with what I had but it worked very well.
did some smaller ones the next day the same way (using a much smaller gas torch though) and got the same results.
twisting and pulling with pliers couldn't even make the connection budge

it is important to keep heating the connectors for a while after you dunk the cable in though.
you need to make sure the solder as melted into the cable.

[zooks4life]

Hi guys, thanks to everyone that pitched in. I got a new Anderson plug and yes the lugs were in the wrong way and it now works a treat! Here's to cold beers whilst camping again! Cheers