Hi gents,

I finally have electricity in my garage, and I will no longer have to remove and install the battery in my cars periodically to keep them fully charged. I have purchased some ring terminals to use with my Optima 400 charger to charge thr Optima Battery in my vehicles.

For those of you that have these ring terminals permanently connected, where did you connect them to? Obviously one goes in the positive battery terminal cable of the car, but the other one is throwing me of. Official instructions suggest the negative ring terminals must be connected to chassis, but I see lots of guys on Utube have the negative connected to the negative battery connector (like the pos side)

Can any of you that have already had these permanent terminals in your XJS’s tell me how you have it set up, please?

thanks!

Edit: also, do you remove the battery cover when you hook up the battery tender?

 

Right now I have the negative ring like this, but I am not sure if this will work:

 

It makes no difference, to chassis or direct to the battery, just as long as the circuit is made.
On my car, as fiddling with the battery is such a pain, I purchased a rather nice fused DIN socket and DIN plug, and rigged up the socket under the bonnet (positive to the firewall post, negative to body nearby).
Then all I have to do is pop the bonnet and plug it in.

 

Likewise.

All mine are connected under the bonnet.

Via the boot is just silly, as the boot either needs to be left open, light on, duh, or the leads via the boot seal, damage = $$, duh again.

Also, on the later critters, the boot being open prevents the car actually going to "sleep", thus drawing some 2amps +/- at all times.

The bonnet has no such effect on the electrickery of the beasts, and the leads will generally fit between the bonnet and headlights, side guard or whatever, without causing damage.

Like Greg, my "pigtail" is permanent to the car, and the battery cables, cover etc all stay as is.

 

Smart, I.never thought of doing a plug from the engine bay, ideally if one is feeling inspired you could even wire it all into a discrete water-proof (marine?) Plug under the car out of sight.

 

I have no idea what the boot seal looks like on XJS but on my 07 XKR and 96 XJ12's I have the tenders strapped to the side of my batteries in the boot. I just pop the trunk lid and lay the cord out and shut the lid. This way when I travel I can plug in anywhere with an extension cord. In 5+ years and 30,000+ miles on the XKR you cannot tell where the cord has contacted the boot seal when closed on it and it's been plugged in everyday. The XJ's do not get driven enough to damage or not damage the seal so cannot speak from experience but I doubt highley if it would affect them either. Just another option/opinion.

 

on my 86 the cigar lighter is permanently live so i have a socket in it to the tender. seems to work ok

 

Hell - I must be over kill, I have an isolator knob on my battery negative to isolate the battery and then plug in my charger every week or so to keep it charged up with clips.
I like the bonnet idea... I think I will look in to this option. Always a pain as the radio looses it stations and the trip computer resets.

I suppose there is no need t disconnect when the tender is plugged in.

 

Mate, ya been locked down too long.

Under the bonnet is the go, leave the battery attached, and that simply means more productive drinking time.

 

On the XJ-S, the BT is just wired to the battery terminals with a short tail into the boot and works just fine that way for me. I don't know if this is bogus, but with the older battery chemistry used in the older cars, I was guided by the PO to leave the boot propped open a crack when trickle-charging the battery. He said that this was so that any discharged hydrogen has a chance to escape and not a) gather enough to explode (unlikely, but a most sub-optimal outcome) or b) gradually rot out the boot lid (secondary sub-optimal outcome). The boot lamp has been sabotaged to avoid unnecessary drain, fire risk etc. I thought the bulb had been pulled, but recently found that not to be the case, so I'm not sure how the sabotage was actually perpetrated, and that is on the list to investigate at some point. My "moderns" (F-Type/XJL) have a sealed battery (or two I think), so I don't bother with the same rigmarole there. The cable just gets slammed between the seal and the lid. The XJL has a Jag branded charger installed with the port in the side of the trunk lining and the wiring to the earth in the car. The F-Type is just wired to the terminals like the XJ-S. All three work just fine and have had no problems. Don't over think it could be the summary here!