Seriously, I need to find some battery hook ups. I'm in the middle of redoing my wire whip and the only way I can start the engine in this 30F weather is to drag my work in progress to the truck.

I thought I had heavy duty jumper cables until I melted them pretty bad . I bought them from autozone and that is the biggest they get. Napa has some thicker ones but for $200 I'm not up to it. Maybe the truck doesn't need to be started during the winter? I'm just trying to keep it all lubricated so it doesn't seize up on me while I keep the build process going. I thought about cutting the positive cable out of the whip. The grid heaters are soldered into the main fee which I'm not sure if that is normal setup? I'm also thinking about running quick connects from the grid heaters, maybe splice the wire and install them. Napa doesn't sell anything that big and lowes is pretty much useless.

Any suggestions?

As a side note.. when I hook my jump cables from the batter to the starter and then touch the solenoid it barely turns the engine. If the original cables are hooked to the battery, turns it over hard. Lacking some beefy cables.

 

Have you tested your battery for a bad cell? Even with a bad cell it can still read 12v.

Go to a welding shop, truck shop, or tractor shop and get 2/0 cable. They usually can make you some. Otherwise you can solder yourself some.

 

Make the connection here! Ton of good stuff here.

http://www.delcity.net/store/Battery...&-Accessories/

 

Battery is brand new, picked it up at tractor supply. I believe it's 920 something cranking amps. It does crank the truck over rather fast, pretty sure it's the cables. I bought some wire crimps online (SK love their stuff).

I'm going to set it up so it looks like this;



Just use the old cable. This will help me un hook and re-connect until I'm done. What do you guys think?

 

You should be able to remove the positive cable from the rest of the harness by disconnecting a couple connectors.

With just the main cables connected there is a connector just a few inches from the positive terminal that goes down to the starter solenoid- you can jump that connector with with a heavy wire to engage the starter. no harness needed.

You do need to run a wire over to the fss if you have one and make sure its in park or out of gear as it will start either way.

 

I made a set of jumper cables out of 4/0 welding cable years ago. as I remember it cost about half as much as the napa ones. and are about half again as long.

 

Something to ponder. For the longest, I hated all of the wires hanging off the positive battery terminal. So I bought a dual post deep cycle marine battery. All those extra wires got proper terminals and put on the binder posts of the battery along with some ground straps.

 

Factory-original has ring-terminals on both HOT grid-heater wires and them on the bolt that clamps the lead terminal onto the HOT post; like-wise the 4-AWG black wire that feeds everything EXCEPT the starter.

Actually, on thinking about it, that black cable may be included alongside the big cable where they both are soldered/melted into the lead terminal; none of this exists on any of our trucks as they all have threaded-stud batteries instead of lead-posts.

The only thing the big HOT cable feeds is the starter; once the engine is running, you could toss that big cable into the ditch and the rest of the truck never know the difference.


I always dis-connect the grid-heaters and never hook them back up; in all my years of cross-country travel, I have yet to notice their absence.


So far as connecting stuff to battery HOT, I install an insulated HOT junction stud a short distance from the battery(s); I connect a short cable from the battery to this stud; this cable is the ONLY cable that is actually connected to the battery; the starter-cable and ALL other accessories get connected to the HOT junction stud.

Thus, the only cable that gets eat up by corrosion is the short, thus not so expensive, cable that ties the battery to the stud.

Actually, I have found that 98% of battery terminal corrosion is eliminated by getting all the extra stuff away from the battery.

 

The 89and 90 trucks do have lead post batteries. But do have the goofy wires to the positive clamp bolt.

 

For the past 50 years, I've prevented battery terminal corrosion by:

When I pull the dipstick to check the oil, I touch it to each battery terminal.

 

Now that's some good ol' Yankee ingenuity, don't even waste a drop of oil!

 

I'll have to get some pictures up. I'm waiting for my wire crimps to arrive and I will start hacking at it. I like the post idea, I also have been pondering a dual battery setup.

touch the dipstick to the post.. I like it

 

This is what I did (see picture). I like using copper anti seize on all my electrical connections, it is an oil base and conductive.

 

What group battery is that?

 

Is that a Deep Cycle/ Starting Battery or starting only?