Adopting The SAE Standard On My Yamaha Vity

So having decided to adopt the SAE connector as my standard for powering my scooter accessories, I have gone ahead and ordered a number of different parts from the interweb which will make my Garmin Zumo (and other accessories) fully functional on longer rides.

Here's a list of everything I have ordered, hopefully they should get here soon.

Battery Tender Terminal:

This is a common trade name for a SAE lead with ring terminals on the other end. The reason is that this is one of the shipped components of the Battery Tender battery charging system. This part goes on to the battery to allow easy connection and disconnection of the Battery Tender without unscrewing the battery covers each time. One end of the lead has ring terminals on both the positive and the negative wire (helpfully marked red and black).

These are attached to two terminals of the battery itself - simply unscrew the terminal screws which keep the battery electricals in place, add the ring terminal and put the screw back on. This keeps the lead firmly connected to the battery at all times. The other end is the SAE hermaphrodite end. While theoretically I could make either the exposed or the insulated half the positive, it makes sense for the insulated half to the be the positive side to prevent short circuiting. Helpfully, the SAE end does come with a waterproof cover to further prevent chances of a short circuit. In between is an in-line blade fuse placement in the wire with a 15amp fuse in it already. This is very helpful as the fuse will blow if more than 15amps is being drawn (e.g. in case of a short circuit), preventing a nasty fire.

SAE wire:

This is just a plain old wire with a SAE terminal on one end and bare wires on the other. The wire is rated at 5amps which is more than enough for the Zumo 660. The Zumo 660 handlebar mount itself comes with a pair of bare wires. So what I need to do is strip all the wires, connect the two positives together and the two negatives together - either crimp them together in a butt splicer or solder them up.

SAE to cigarette lighter female:

As mentioned in the previous post, this is really useful as it will feed off the Vity battery when connected to the SAE output from the battery and I can plug in ipod or mobile travel chargers when needed.

More SAE wires:

Have also ordered 6 SAE power side wires and 6 SAE load side wires to use in the future with any other accessories I may want to connect to the battery. Now given that SAEs are hermaphrodite, I would have thought that there shouldn't be separate wires for power and load. However, the place I ordered them from has coloured wires (red for positive and black/white for negative). So on the source side, the red wire is attached to the insulated half and on the load side the red wire is attached to the exposed half. You can of course use one for the other as long as you don't then confuse them afterwards.

[First Published 3 February 2010]