battery disconect switch in brass

C

copperpenny

Member
Anyone remember a recent thread in which a barner in the thread mentioned an ebay listing for a battery disconnect switch made in the USA and was made of brass and not made of pot metal from Chine Had the round disconnect knob.
 
Hope you can dig it up. Seems that someone checked out the "brass" connector and after running a file (?) or something over it he found the same old pot metal. May have been Grainger.
Howard
 
I don't know about brass but most all the suppliers have those disconnectors. I don't like that type of disconnect because they sometimes don't make good contact. I like the switch with an on/off knob. You can get them at the same places.
 
The best battery shutoff switch are made be Cole Hersee, Boston MA. Virtually every race car has one, and I have one on both A's. The are not pot metal, they are a steel housing, with a switch knob the operates a positive, spring loaded, internal detent contact system. I do not know what the contact material is, but you can assume it is brass or copper. You can get the specs from Cole-Hersee. They used to be made in South Boston, but more likely in Mexico today. Be sure to switch the ground side. No ground, no juice, anywhere.
 
One guy on ebay advertised his as not the cheap ones (pot metal?) but when I asked him what they were made of (brass or copper) he said they were not copper or brass but the same old pot metal. So much for "not the cheap ones"
 
It seems that without exception ALL of the green or black knob varieties that fit on the battery terminal are brass plated pot metal (Mazak). They offer a high resistance when in use. Furthermore they are designed to fit on the negative terminal only.

To overcome this problem I made one from solid brass. It works well. I made the tapered hole for the positive terminal using a Snap-On battery taper terminal restorer.

Pics to follow
 
Battery isolator. Only piece I retained from the cheap pot metal version was the plastic insulator
 

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There's no doubt that the Cole Hersey switches are excellent however they do not offer the simplicity of the battery terminal mounted version.

If only someone made them in solid brass.
 
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