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hi everyone Jeff Cote here with boatingtechtalk.com uh we've got a question from a fellow boater Darth uh Darth lays out the groundwork says I've got a four gauge on a 3000 watt inverter so four gauge is the wire size and generally that's uh pretty much the largest wire size that we see aboard a recreational boats is four off so it's basically the thickness of pretty pretty substantial thumb let's put it that way and Darth keeps going and says I've noticed that the chassis ground on my inverter is very small that's a bad thing by the way very bad thing good on you for noticing would it be weird to install a 28 2-0 gate gauge wire to such a small terminal post yeah that's a tough question we've seen many inverters without naming names and some of them are supposedly designated for marine installs and Marine installs have a code where it stipulates that the chassis ground wire connected to your inverter charger should be at a minimum only one size smaller than the wiring connected to the positive and negative post so for instance in darth's case it's not he should have three out wiring on that chassis post but like he said you know in his instance the terminal is Tiny so what we actually in the past did is actually undo the terminal install a new bolt make sure that the bolt had a good connection to the chassis and actually put a lug directly to the chassis with a new Bolt effectively bypassing the all too often tiny chassis ground connection point that unfortunately doesn't allow us Marine electricians to meet abyc code so it is a real issue and you cannot and I agree with the code this is not a this I mean this is a separate conversation to argue if it should or shouldn't my opinion is I agree with the recommendation you should certainly certainly have only one size smaller chassis ground wire so we end up having to be creative as a weight on how do we make sure that the chassis of that inverter charger doesn't utilize the undersized post but we either replace it or find a way to actually have a solid and good electrical contact between the inverter charger and that chassis so I would recommend Darth to install a 3 ought or forought connection if he doesn't have three opt then do four out connection between the inverter chassis and inverter charger chassis and uh his on this boat would be his grounding connection right and it's a pain but you've got to do it because I've seen boats that are have too hot or four out wiring to the inverter and the chassis connection is a number 10 wire generally that's down by the household electrician and they just don't know it's it's not it's not bad they don't they don't know what they don't know and so they end up wiring it for house code wiring and so a lot of you it's worth checking what's the chassis ground on my inverter charger and is it much smaller than the positive and negative and if it is that's not the code and so great question uh Darth and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for tuning in and geeking out with me as we try to learn uh more and more about Marine electrical systems so if you're curious again go on our website and find out more answers and solutions with this sort of setup and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for listening and tuning in English (auto-generated)