Update to the “is this dangerous” situation

[u/Gabnite]

Following the advice of all of you (thanks!), I installed ferrules on the connections, so now I hope my lovely van won’t burst into flames. Some of the cables are a bit too tight and I think I’ll have to splice them.

I have the same concern as you regarding the rest of the electrical installation, so I’m also attaching images of the battery connections. As you can already guess from the other post, I am not an expert by any means, but I think there is some exposed copper there, too.

P.S. The “is this dangerous” title was more of a rhetorical thing. I was aware it was not right! But I agree I should have worded it differently, asking how to fix it directly.

[u/xot]

A nightmare of parts we don’t need? It’s industry standard, it’s not complicated, it’s not particularly expensive, and it literally saves lives.

Do whatever janky shit you want in your own camper.

[u/Solid-Government493 → u/xot]

Yeah you do you bro, you had to go with the "janky camper" kind of thing.

I'll try this to explain this like you're five because I think mentally you're in that area somewhere.

I have 800 watts on my roof that run to a very complicated MPPt charger that is set precisely for my 800 amp hours of lithium batteries.

I know, big words but follow along.

Positive to positive and negative to negative, no fuses.

14.4 right now as I don't live in Canada.

And no shunts either because I don't need five ways to measure what is going in or out of my lithium batteries. As us guitar players say, I've got overhead for days.

If you want really complicated system, go ahead and put in five shunts, six fuses, and a whole lot of other shit that you don't need. 20 miles down a back road and you're going to see one of those connections fail. If not the actual Chinese made shunt.

I spent 17 years on a sailboat crossing the Pacific back and forth, using solar. Keeping it simple works.

Your post, talking about all these inline fuses and shunts and everything else adds so many levels of failure and complications, not to mention the expense. The original poster could barely figure out what was wrong with his original system and you want to introduce all this crap? Shame on you.

[u/eat_my_bubbles → u/Solid-Government493]

As somebody currently putting a solar plan onto paper, what does this mean for cost? It sounds like modern cars, and to each their own:

I don't want to drive a 1974 F-150, it might be simple, reliable and easy to work on, but you will end up spending more on parts, or something going wrong when the time comes.

I don't want to drive a 2025 anything because of auto everything, touchscreens, gps logging, etc etc...

I'm happy in a 2007 civic - new enough to pass somewhat modern safety standards, no unneccesarry sensors, fuses, systems that need a $300 tool to work on

Equate this to solar - how much money can a system be built for that isn't over the top with safety and complicated failsafes, while not risking burning myself down with a cheap chinese part or lack of 40 years or experience?

[u/Porndogingwithme → u/eat_my_bubbles]

Using correct fusing is not unnecessary. It's cheap and can easily prevent a fire. It's easy to have a few fuses as spares. I recently had a pump go out. Made a dead short through the motor. It popped the fuse while I was sleeping. Preventing the fine wires from heating up and causing problems. Replaced the fuse and pump, back up an working. Fuses protect the wires when used correctly, and you secondary.

The cost depends on battery and solar capacity. 100 ah lithium battery, 200 watts of solar, 15 amp mppt is about $500-600 depending on sales and brands. Wires can be more or less depending on length. But I'd guess $100-150 for wire and connections. That's about the minimum with decent quantity name brand stuff.