Saw a post about this recently, The more i think about it the better i like the idea, so I thought I would ask if anyone has a good place to pick up a good splash resistant or better yet -waterproof ATC type fuse block? 4-6 gang would be great, i dont need one with a relay like the Painless wiring offerings. (Those actually look like Hella blocks snapped together)

 

here is a post from when I first got my jeep. the cirkit boss has the availability of a waterproof cover that I have since ordered.







Well, The jeep is about 5 days old. I havent had alot of time to put on all of the goodies. I decided that I would start with the electrical system and make sure that I had power for all of my accessories. (off road lights, dimming mirror, cb, heat seats etc). I decided to install a Cirkit Boss 7 from painless wiring. It gives me 4 switched and 3 unswitched power sources. It is all grounded under the hood so the only wires brought into the cabin are the positive wires. It took me about an hour and a half to install because I wanted to keep it clean looking. The cirkit boss cost me about 80 bucks Jegs.

This is what comes in the kit.




This is the installed product.






here is a pic of the big fuse breaker (with rubber caps)



This is the group of 7 wires going through the pass side cowl area



Here is a pic of the switched lead and main power going into the fuse box. As a note, I had to trim off a small tab from the fuse box lid to allow these wires to go in there and still close without crimping the wires.




Here they are coming into the interior behind the side panel. I will just hook up all of the accessories up in this area since it is easilly accessable. I will then wrap with some foam to keep it from rattling.



another pic of the final install



here is the mirror.



I'm sorry that I didnt do a full write up on the install but I just thought that I'd tell ya what I did and how I did it. It was very self explanatory. Note that I did have to trim some of the insulation off of the back firewall.

 

>>>here is a post from when I first got my jeep. the cirkit boss has the availability of a waterproof cover that I have since ordered. I decided to install a Cirkit Boss 7 from painless wiring. <<<

I read your comment about the ground and saw that the Cirkit Boss 7 has a ground lug. Thus if it is installed in the cabin with a screw into the sheet metal, the chassis becomes the ground circuit. I would have thought that an appropriately sized ground wire back to the battery would have been preferred. If there are seven 10 amp circuits, a ground wire sized to handle the worst case of 70 amps would be needed. I have found that with radios, a chassis ground plus a direct battery ground connection is best.

Perhaps I have missed something in the Cirkit Boss design or the way you installed it. Could you elaborate for me please. Thanks

 

ummmmmmm the cirkit boss has a ground lug in place that supports a ground for the box itself. everything that I hooked up inside, I also grounded.

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but the entire chassis already is a ground circuit. In most cars, teh battery's negative lead is strapped to the body (Or usually the engine block, which is then connected to the frame, which connects to the body, making your circuit...)

Many car audio setups are simple grounded to the body, with no issue. I had a 2400 watt RMS set up, with 2 Amplifiers grounded to my explorer's floor panel. I ended up wiring a second ground "strap" from the battery to the firewall to decrease resistance, but it worked fine without it...

 

Yup, I am familiar with the chassis ground circuit. Unlike the boat where everything has to have a ground wire. Chassis grounded circuits are relatively low amperage and all connected to the chassis individually.

The circuit block looks like it would be attached to the chassis ground with a sheet metal screw and may have to handle much higher currents, the sum of the 7 separate circuits. Unless the separate devices are themselves grounded to the chassis at their installed location. If this is the case then the single sheet metal screw on the fuse block woud not be handling the sum of the currents.

That's why I asked for clarification of the total wiring method but maybe I did not ask well.

For example I would not expect a single screw in sheet metal to carry the high current of my ham radio. It gets its own fat wires to battery + and -.

 

Ahhh... I see...

 

Did you just mount it in with the top two screws only?

 

on my motorcycle, I used a Blue Sea fuse block.. water resistant, easy to install and looks good. Available at any marine supply store.

http://bluesea.com/category/5/21/productline/126