battery switch common cabling

[liamgatt]

All, Any reason my two batteries (#1 start/#2 deep cycle) switch would have two heavy cables wired from the common to the starter for an OMC Zephyr saildrive? This is in addition to the cable leading to the instrument panel and the two smaller wires going to a battery gauge and on/off switch. I haven't seen this two cable set up to starter in all my recent researching online.Seems to me there should only be one cable to starter.Thanks, Liam

 

[Ron20324]

Maybe one cable was not heavy enough? Yeah, the preference is there should only be ONE cable- of the proper size- but two is not a sin.

 

[FourPoints]

Extra ground connections are not a bad thing, especially if you somehow damage a cable underway (you have redundant ground paths), though it's not exactly common practice either.

 

[bawlmer]

This may sound like a dumb answer but are you sure both are ground? You will need both a hot and ground wire from your panel to the starter.