I found a way to elliminate that type of problem, almost entirerly. Wire everything with a switched ground, insteed of the hot. You can also cut down on wires. You can use a buss like we did in aviation, and hook all your switches to the same ground. Run a wire to the battery to make you feel good, but also ground/bolt it directly to the body. Doing this, wil reverse the problems of shorts. Should you get one, the device will run insteed of quit, ensuring you can pull, and the problem can be fixed later.
It also wont burn things up so bad. A short in the ground wont develope the heat and arch that a short on the hot side will..
Also, since most of your devices will be closer to the battery anyways, you reduce the drop between the battery and the device, because you will run the hot wire straight from the batt to the device, or the relay if you use them.
Your kill switch can funtion the same way, but you dont have to run a hot all the way back and then to the front again, twice if you kill ign and fuel, so you eliminate two long wires there. Thats if you ran hot to the kill, i know a lot of people use the switched ground system for the kill switch all ready, so what i do is the same as that theroy, I get rid of a bunch of wires, and almost eliminate failures do to shorted wires.
If you switch hot, you have to run a hot wire to the dash switch then back out to the device or relay. You have two chances for failure. If you switch ground you can run just one large battery cably from the ground up to your switch area. What works well is a strip of thick aluminum. Bolt you rcable to one end. I like to take the time and space all the switches, if you do you can drill and tap the strip, and bolt all your switches to the strip where the wires would go, and still mount them in the dash pretty easy. It takes some planning to make this work out, but its not hard. And it helps keep your switches tight, and if one loosens up, it wont push through the hole where you cant get to it.
