Hopefully this play-by-play will give confidence to the
DIY installer to consider the Zeus and answer some of your questions. I tried to add as much detail as I could. I'm an office guy and a
DIY installer on my own boat, so not a professional installer.
So, to begin with, this isn't a real time installation, as this has been a true "boat project" where installation was delayed due to having to stop to fix other "boat stuff," ie: the Garhouser
dinghy outboard lift, located just outside of the engine compartment that I've been working in, that went swimming due to bi-metallic
corrosion, resulting in a recovery dive and fabrication for
repair...
Alternator mounting was further delayed as I'm working with a prototype alternator, and fabrication was required to fit to our
Yanmar 3YM30.
Once installation of the high output alternator and Zeus was underway, things went pretty smoothly. A Balmar pulley kit was required to switch from the OEM V-Belt pully. On our engine, the kit has 10 teeth. If you've never done this before, the installation is pretty straight forward. The kit has 3 pulleys (in our engine case, the kits are engine specific), a belt, and fasteners. The crank-shaft pully was pretty straight forward, clean off any built up
paint or rust, back off 4 bolts, smear on Tefgel (included in the kit) to protect from bi-metallic
corrosion between the
aluminum and
steel pully, and the new pully goes over the existing pully, bolted back on. The fresh
water pump pully was removed (use an impact driver for this, you'll thank me later), and the similar process to the other pully with Tefgel and re-bolting took place. The alternator pully was removing the center bolt (impact driver and a gloved hand) and replaced the new pully. Make sure the belt lines up, place the alternator on the engine, grabbing the belt and tighten.
Our prototype is a 250A case grounded alternator. I ground off some
paint on the front of the bottom tensioning foot to attach a new 2/0 wire and the Alt VGND sending wire for the Zeus on the Alternator harness. I attached another 2/0 wire and the Zeus Alt V+ wire to the alternator positive output. These required ring terminals. The other Zeus alternator harness wires were butt-connected (18Awg) to the appropriate alternator control wires. The Zeus alternator thermistor had a case mounting point on the alternator designated for this purpose. Input 2 was not used in my application, but could be used for a physical switch to shut down the alternator in the case of belt slipping, etc. I was okay with the in app-switch for this feature.
Also, note that two in-line 30Amp
fuses are required for the Alt V+ and the Alt Field wire. These are not included in the Zeus package, so pick up 3 inline fuse cases and 2 30A with 1 5A, I'll get to the 5A later... While I'm at it, the Zeus kit includes two
wiring harnesses and two thermistors. You'll need a good handful of red ring terminals, red butt connectors, and a few mounting screws for the basic installation as well.
The included two Zeus harnesses are 6' long, I chose to mount the Zeus in my battery compartment, even though it is rated for installation in the engine compartment. In my application, this was a cleaner install with regard to not having to
work around a spider-web of wires. With this regard, all of the wires can be extended using 18AWG wire, with the exception of the thermistor, which was about 10-15' long, so extension was not required.
As a side note, I'm installing on a system that originally had the alternator wired to the start battery. Due to the increased expected output of the alternator as controlled by the Zeus, I removed the ground and positive wire from the factory alternator and added a 2/0 positive and negative wire from the new alternator to my house battery. I installed a Blue Sea Systems 8255 Digital Meter Shunt 500a/50MV on the positive side wire, followed by an appropriately sized megafuse, and tied into my positive bus/house bank. None of the
equipment in this paragraph is included in the Zeus kit. This second alternator side shunt is optional. A house bank shunt is required for the installation.
The Zeus battery harness install was likewise pretty intuitive. The ignition wire went back to the original OEM alternator harness with a butt-connector. This was mentioned to Acadia that maybe it belongs on the Zeus alternator harness in future generations. In my installation, to an
AGM house bank, several wires are for future use/applications were coiled and tucked away (Input 1, Enable ATC-a
LiFePO4 BMS connection, Output 1). Two house battery shunt wires were coiled together, required cutting to length (shortened) for my install, and ring connectors. I have an existing Victron Energy 500a 50mv Shunt SHU500050100, which accepts two ring terminals on it's side, which I connected to. (A Smart shunt without these terminals may require tapping and screwing opposite the Victron circuit board or other connection). The twisted alternator shunt wires likewise got ring terminals and wired to the Blue Sea Systems shunt mentioned above. This was placed inside of a pvc
electrical box to protect from accidental
arc. The BatV-Sense and BatV+Sense wires got ring terminals and went to either appropriate end terminal of my parallel bank. The Bat Temp thermistor went to the positive battery terminal on the first battery of my bank. I did find that the supplied wire and ring terminal were a bit small for an
AGM application, so it was connected to the battery clamp tightening bolt. This shouldn't be an issue for
LiFePO4 installations. The Bat GND wire went to a ground bus bar with a ring terminal, and the BatV+ wire got the inline 5 amp fuse mentioned before, a ring terminal, and to a positive bus.
I extended my N2K backbone to another N2K T-Connector with a terminator and a N2K connection to the Zeus. None of this is included in the Zeus kit, but it populated the Zeus information on my Victron Cerbo GX.
All in all, when you first open the box and get into the harnesses, it looks overwhelming, but as you get into the installation and follow the app instructions, it's really a pretty simple DIY job with basic
wiring. Depending on the boat and location of the engine compartment and battery compartment, I'd plan on 1-2 days for installation of the Zeus with holdups being running wires through the firewall and replacement of a stock alternator and upgrading wiring as I'll describe. A standard DIY will have most all of the tools you should need, except maybe the large crimpers if you have to upgrade your alternator wires (and, no, the Harbor Freight Chicago hydraulic crimper won't crimp larger than 0AWG.)
The Zeus app is currently active on the Android play store and the Apple App Store. You can "Create a Demo Device" to familiarize yourself with the app even before you have the product in hand. You can likewise "Begin New Setup" and simulate the step-by-step installation process.
The Zeus installation guide can be located here:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/01...Guide_V11..pdf