Save Your Battery! Polaris General Kill Switch Installation - UTV maintenance / UTV storage

This winter I found out when we would leave our Polaris General parked for a few weeks, we'd come back to find a battery without enough charge to start our machine, or a couple times we left our com system on which drained our battery even faster. So I decided to add a kill switch / battery cut off switch to take care of the problem once and for all.

This is a pretty simple job that anyone should be able to do. The parts I used are listed below. Simply put, an in-line switch of sufficient amperage is placed between the negative battery terminal and the ground of the machine. Why the negative side? It's going to be the easiest place to install it, and it's probably the safest / best way to do it too. NHRA and some racing organizations require the cut off switch to be on the positive side, mainly because they are more concerned about crashes and fires. Some other racing organizations are fine with it on the negative side. The main thing is, we want to be able to kill any power drain on the battery when the machine is not in use and putting it on the negative side accomplishes this is the simplest and safest manner.

ALL OF THESE ITEMS I PURCHASED FROM MY LOCAL AUTO PARTS STORE - WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE CUTOFF SWITCH. I put the links below just so you can see what each item is.

60" 4 gauge negative battery cable from my local OReilly auto (I couldn't find a link to the one I bought - this is 72" which is a bit longer than you may need. Remember the length will vary based on where you put your switch and your machine)
https://www.amazon.com/East-Penn-0081...

72" 4 gauge battery cable with two 3/8" leads
https://www.amazon.com/Assembled-Batt...

3/8 battery cable lug (on the Polaris General - the lug of the wire leading to the accessory bus bar is not large enough. You can try drilling it larger like I did, but it will probably break and you'll have to put a new lug on anyways) - ***Note, the link below is for 10 pieces. I'd go to your local auto parts store - a pack of two is a couple bucks.
https://www.amazon.com/SELTERM-Gauge-...

to solder on the lug I used a propane torch, a thicker gauge electrical solder and some flux, and 1/2" shrink tubing. There are a lot of videos on YT about how to crimp and solder a battery lug on - let me know if you have questions though. I wound up carefully using a bolt cutters to crimp the lug because I didn't want to remove the entire cable from the vehicle. You need some good force to crimp those things on.

350 amp cut off switch
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/pc...

For mounting the switch I used 1 1/2" 10-24 (3/16 diameter) cap screws, lock washers and nuts.


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