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hi everyone

jeff cote here with boatingtechtalk.com

we've got a question from rudy a fellow

boater uh

rudy asks jeff i'm not clear why

or what are protective boots on

batteries are they just

for house batteries what are they used

for oh

rudy love it i didn't talk about

protective boots in a long time

let's do this okay so the reality

is that there's a lot of

sources of

let's call it power or energy on our

boats and battery is an example of that

and if you ever had an accidental short

meaning you dropped a wrench or dropped

something metallic and i've

seen boaters be this close from losing

their boat by actually putting literally

crab traps or prawn traps on top of

battery banks

their crab traps are made of metal and

if ever a positive and negative shorted

they're kept put like it's over it's

game over like look for the exits i hope

you're a good swimmer

it's game over because you can never

ever

ever ever have a positive and a negative

post on a battery

be shorted together directly so

all right that's the rule and how many

evers did i say a lot

okay that's emphasis that is a black and

white rule

okay so what do you do to prevent that

from happening

you know over time people have realized

well hey you know what if if dead shorts

are a problem

why don't we actually instead of having

two pieces of metal that are only maybe

eight inches or ten inches

right which is 15 centimeters apart

instead of having two things that if

they touch one another

causes a life-and-death situation why

don't we actually put

a protective boot on top

right so that if you do drop something

the

metal parts are not exposed smart makes

complete sense

here's the challenge most people

actually don't know the purpose of a

protective booth

they find it an annoyance it's in the

way so what they do is they remove it

and it's hard because it's meant to be

there and then they yank on it

pull on it they do what they have to do

and they're like i don't want to go

through that again

that's a pain so what do they do with

the protective boot they leave it

somewhere away from actually the

terminal the battery terminal

because they just want to have the

convenience next time of not having to

do that again

and that's the problem is they defy the

whole purpose of the

the protective boot to begin with

because it has to be not on the cable

somewhere

it has to be over the post the other

place where it's commonly found

is on a starter solenoid or even an

alternator post because and this is why

the whole engine is negative the whole

thing is grounded

you have two posts on that on that

engine that are unfused most likely on

fuse because the code does not require

us to fuse the starter circuit

so your battery is effectively on the

starter

and it's effectively on the alternator i

see this

all too often i invite all of you if you

have a boat

or you have a friend's boat next time

you're on that boat

go have a look at the starter and the

alternator

and sadly i can't tell you how many

times like i'm talking like

way over 50 percent of the boats the

protective boot is

literally remove brought down the cable

and now the positive alternator post

and the starter solenoid positive post

which are unfused by the way

and all around it within inches

literally centimeters

is negative so it's even worse than the

battery the whole engine block is

negative

and if ever you're working on your

engine twisting a wrench this is me

working my wrench

if ever that happens and you touch a

you're working on

the engine and you touch the positive

post of the alternator or the starter

it will be a memorable event in your

life

you will never forget it clearly your

hand is going to be

seared because most likely the wrench is

all metal there's going to be literally

that wrench is going to get so smoking

hot there's going to be sparks all over

the place it's going to be sort of your

own version of fireworks

in your engine room if it's a gasoline

engine room this might be your last

firework showing

right clearly you can't have sparks in a

gasoline engine room

so the protective boots are there to

protect us from

doing or having an accident strongly

encourage

all battery posts positive and negative

should have them

and as well you should put them

everywhere else on the boat where you

have large amperage connectors we see

them even on thrusters

we'll see those battery boots we'll see

them like i said on starter solenoids

and you put them everywhere so that you

do not have an accidental short

of the positive to the negative wire

great question

love it and look at us geeking out about

protective boots

thanks for asking

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