Changing the +ve battery cable?

[geeman237]

I've read on various posts that changing the positive battery cable to a thicker gauge is a good mod. Currently the engine and gearbox is out of my 4.0 pre-cat, so perhaps an ideal time to do this? Any tips on how to do it? Do you have to remove the birdsnest fuse box in the passenger footwell?

[phillpot]

Worked ok for the last 20 or more years?

I know some people are a bit neurotic about cable size when moving the battery all the way to the boot


Uprated battery cable being delivered to TVR Parts

Edited by phillpot on Wednesday 3rd April 18:01

[Penelope Stopit]

Choose the best cable run that is safe, secure and suits you, be sure to use very flexible welding cable

[Steve_D]

If the engine is out you should have the old cable hanging out of the bulkhead. Simply remove it, make a new one and refit in the same route.
As said use welding cable which has dozens of very fine copper strands and is very flexible so is more resistant to damage from vibration.

Steve

[Colin RedGriff]

It might be easier if the engine out, certainly access will be.

I did it with the engine in place and found the only way I could get the new cable in was to pull a thin wire through from the footwell to the engine bay. I used some spare bell wire. Attach the new cable to the wire, taking care to make it smooth so that it doesn't jam on the way.

I could not get the new cable to feed from the footwell to the engine bay, it would only go when starting from the engine bay and it is pretty tight so you need to make sure you have attached your feed wire very securely.

[Belle427]

On a Chimaera I ran some electrical 20 mm flexible conduit across the bulkhead when my engine was out. Drilled a new hole next to battery and used a gland supplied with conduit, if you ever need to change it in future you can just pull a new length through easily.

[Sardonicus]

Belle427 said:

On a Chimaera I ran some electrical 20 mm flexible conduit across the bulkhead when my engine was out. Drilled a new hole next to battery and used a gland supplied with conduit, if you ever need to change it in future you can just pull a new length through easily.

I ran a heavy ground cable from the battery - post through the bulkhead straight to the eng block years ago so simple and correct Steve D my brother-in-law is a site sparks and he as always used welding cable for his race cars for the starter power and grounds , the fact its all black dont matter he dont need the colour red to indicate that its a 12v positive when you can tag the ends

Edited by Sardonicus on Thursday 4th April 23:31