Last weekend when I was up in Brookfield, the second battery on my truck stopped charging again on my way home. Yes, again. I heard the low battery alarm go off, and I thought it was an issue with the battery isolator exciter line coming loose. I had accidentally broken the crimp terminal on that and had just bolted down the exciter wire directly to the isolator, during the earlier spring excitement when I was playing with fuses.

It was a temporary fix, but got me back up camping. I figured the temporary fix had failed. after hitting bumps. I figured the fuse had blown in the process, so I went bought a box of small ring connectors and fuses. Get back with my volt meter, discover the fuse is fine and the problem wasn’t with the excited wire on the isolator, but with the ground from isolator. But I did replace the ring connector, and wired it back to spec.

Then I had to go back to the auto parts store, return the fuses I didn’t use, and get a larger ring terminal to go over the battery’s ground, and more wire then go back to the isolator. The ground nut was a bit of bitch off the isolator, but a little WD-40 fixed that. Once I had the nut off, fabricating a new cable was quick, and I just had to tighten the bolts up and tie the wire back down.

Now on the CB Radio, the Car Radio, Inverter, and Lights in the Truck Cap work. I can go camping again. Plus I like to listen to tunes while driving, and really miss not having the CB radio. But now I’m back in luck, until the next thing breaks.

I swear, they did a nice looking job at the shop when I had the second battery wired up. But as soon as I got it home, and out on the rough dirt roads, everything started to fall apart. I’ve replaced fuses, wires, fuse holders, and half a dozen other things, due to issues I’ve had over the past three years with the wiring job the audio shop I took it to.