Heavy duty "stock" SBC starter?

Thickness depends on the material. A better (more resistant to conducting electricity) material can be thinner.

If you're loading your battery cables like that, either your battery tray is rusted through and the cables are the only thing keeping it from hitting the street or you've got a busted motor mount and your engine moving around the engine compartment every time you press the throttle. In a vehicle that isn't broken, the cables are static other than a slight vibration from the engine. This shouldn't be any problem if the cable has a little slack in it.

Freshman materials science here. thinner strands generally speaking can withstand a higher stress because they have less inclusions and other defects than thicker strands. This is why alot of small strands is generally able to carry a greater load than a piece of solid material.

Never mind the factors of homemade crimps and such.....

The only factor I can see of any issue would be one of corrosion since welding cable is likely not designed to be exposed to water, road salt, etc. But then again, the average battery cable isn't protected where the connector is crimped on either, and copper is copper.

"Molten welding spatter", do you mean Slag? I know what Slag is. It's rather thin in most cases (under a 1/8 of an inch), and not normally more then a 1/8 of an inch wide. It cools fairly rapidly. Slag is really a threat to windshields, exposed skin, air hoses, and Oxy-Acetylene Hoses.

Since Welding Cable is not under that sort of heat lode for long, it doesn't have to be able to sustain it for long.

I don't know about your blathering insulting self, I happen to weld. As well as do vehicle wiring systems. Since you feel like tossing out insults and showing gross stupidity, as well as give bad advice, I'm done with you.

Take your crying else where then alt.autos.camaro.firebird

Charles Bendig Owner Bendig Auto & Rare Parts Hunter auto parts location service

Yeah, like that. I've been there and read a lot. There is another site devoted to truth in audio, but I forget the url right now. Let me check my faves... Okay it's

granted, it's not gospel either, but it is much more truth oriented than some.

Welding cable is a lot more flexible then battery cable, and yes it is meant to be so. It is also meant to take some shock loads, yet nothing like a 400 HP V8 twisting when a mount breaks. Nor have I ever seen welding cable ever crimped properly in a car. Once the outer stands are broken, it's usually free from the crimp or on by only a few strands.

I have also done work with LAN's (Local Area Networks). When I had one in my last home I had RG-58 High Heat. Braided metallic sheathing, under poly-vinyl sheathing. We used that since we ran the LAN wires thru the heating ducts, yet not thru the furnace it's self. Looked a lot better then having wires strung all over going down from the second floor to the first floor.

When I build a home I am going to put 3 inch PVC pipes thru out it. That way I only need a fish-tape, and I can run anything except power line thru the walls with ease. Charles

When Racing, you don't stop because you busted a motor mount. You stop when something bad enough happens. I do everything from help people build Demolition Derby Cars, to work on Off Road Trucks, to working on regular race cars like the OP has.

In a Demolition Derby car things shift around. Mounts snap, cars get considerably shorter. Heck a friend of mine got his car so bent he was having to reach almost to the roof to steer. That right, the car bent up in the center. When you help people build cars like those, you not so much concerned with appearances, as you are what will last the longest, and eliminating weak links.

When you do Off Road trucks, appearances come back in to mind a bit, but so does making things so they last. Who wants to be on a trail at midnight, 100 miles from the nearest parts store open 24 hours,? Not me, And I do go trail ridding, and mudding after dark. Unless I can't limp it home, I will coheres the vehicle to limp home, or atleast on to public land.

In a car like the OP has, the battery is probably inside the cabin in a battery box. Which means the cable is passing thru the firewall. Probably with out even a bulkhead connector. If that's so welding cable or battery cable can chafe and fail.

Excuse my ignorance as to freshmen material science. I never went to college, other then to pick up some girls, and hang with some friends that went. What I know about Electrical I picked up from knowing engineers.

I won't argue about with you about strand loads, and such. Practical example of that is wire rope. Even wire rope rated for 100,000 pounds has relatively thin strands. Even though the total thickness of the woven strands is somewhere over an inch.

I have never seen any welding cables in cars that do not use a home made crimp. So it is a issue to factor in.

Actually a lot of OEM side post cables have a molded rubber end at the battery side. With a crimped on terminal at the other end crimped over the sheathing. Often the sheathing will shrink away from the crimped end. A common problem in ford vehicles (not just limited to their battery cables).

When I see anything more then minor corrosion on a cable I replace it. When I see split sheathing on a cable I also replace it. In the past I have also made my own Battery Cables. Buying X-number of feet, of X-gauge cable. When I did it, I always crimped my own ends, with a crimping die. Then I would shrink wrap a sleeve over the end. Thus the only exposed part was the terminal it's self. Charles

Thankfully the only Audio systems I deal with are for my own personal usage. Nothing super impressive, just stuff that work. Beaters usually get used equipment.Something like my T/A only gets good quality stuff. I'm not big on Home Audio, heck I haven't even hooked my tuner up since I moved. Charles

Different places, different rules. Some classes around here run 'Glides. A lot of the guys around here that run cars like yours use a 3 speed Saginaw manual transmission. Then they gear their rear ends any where from 3.42 to 6.12 depending on the track they run at the most.

What you need to do is find good people who will do work like carb building at a reasonable cost for you. Then take them a few cores to rebuild.

Around here a lot of Salvage yard will give you a discount on parts if you put their name on your car. Say around 2 inch tall lettering. That's how we did it when I managed AtoZ Auto Salvage and Towing. We even kept a stock of 2nd gen cars For Sale, and for parts for the guys that ran them. We had about 60 Racers who were on that racer net program, that drove 2nd gen F-bodies. Cars like the 81 Turbo T/A I drug in were sliced up quick. I drug the car in while I was awaiting a title to be mailed from Florida. Motor blew while up here, title was down there. I went out of town for 2 days, came back and both 1/panels were gone as well as the passenger side fender. I should have drug it home and kept the license plates on it, as it was a majority rust free car.

Heck even now I sponsor a Mini-Stock round track car. it's a 86 Cavalier Z-24. With a Iron Head "Bastard" fuelie 2.8 & Automatic. I gave the guy the car, hauled it to him even. I also gave him a second engine for it this year, and spare transmission. Free car, Free replacement motor, free transmission. I had maybe $125 in both, so it was nothing for me to do. The car in question runs at Kil-Kare raceway as the Worden's Towing & Busy Bee Pallet Car. I know I probably should have my name on it, but having it say Worden's got me a few better deals.

Maybe you should hit up some sponsors?

Charles If you need some cores I might be able to sell you some cheep.

Charles, the only part of your diatribe against welding cables that has any validity is this issue.

Crimp lugs that are designed for large car battery cables that are coarsely stranded are not correct for high-flex, high stranded cable.

With a crimp lug that is for coarse stranded, it is OK to design it in the shape of a tube that is just crushed around the cable. The compression of the strands is strong enough to prevent flexing at the crimp point.

With a high stand cable, a correct crimp lug design would have 2 things - first it would have a blade that would come down and go into the strand bundle for extra connectivity. Second it would have a tube that would extend around the outer jacket for some distance and would be somewhat flexible, much as a typical plastic strain relief you see in any power cable going into a tool is.

Without the additional flex resistance and strain relief, the flexible cable will end up whipping around right at the crimp point and would very quickly break.

We used to see this problem all the time with the old style "bar of soap" Microsoft mice. The highly flexible cable strands would break internally right at the entry point of the cable into the mouse, with the result after a few years the mouse would not work properly. The new mice all have strain reliefs at that point on the cable nowadays.

There is nothing wrong with welding cable in this application if appropriate strain relief is put in at the crimp. You could probably do it with a couple layers of heat shrink tubing that went over the crimp point and extended down the welding cable for a few inches, although it would be better to use a crimp lug that was designed for this.

The usual welding stinger has the cable extend inside of it for some distance to provide this strain relief.

Charles,

Metallic shielded RG58 (ie: STP cable) is ONLY for use with IBM Token Ring. Do NOT use it for Ethernet, it has the wrong impediance. A long enough run will burn out the Ethernet transceivers used in most network adapters.

SOME ethernet cards, particularly older 10BaseT stuff, were designed for use in networks that were migrating from Token Ring, these cards transceivers WILL autodetect if STP is in use and are safe to use in either wiring plant.

Ethernet uses differential signals and is immune to the electrical interference that shielding is supposed to shield against anyway.

Most STP is NOT CAT-5 rated and the stuff that is, is horribly expensive.

Very stupid because the sheathing used in ANY data cable that is NOT plenum rated will give off poison gasses if it catches fire. I don't know what it does if it's merely heated but I would not want to live in a home that had non-plenum rated data cable in the heating ducts.

Running ethernet cable, even plenum, through heating ducts is frankly not very smart. Over time the hot air will harden the sheathing and eventually if you try moving the cable the sheath will crack into pieces. You might get away with it for 10 years or so but eventually the stuff is going to fall apart.

Looks don't equal proper electrical LAN connectivity. One of these days someone will be trying to do high cap data transfers over that cable using 100BaseT full duplex and will be cursing your name when they have to pull out all that misguided nonsense.

You would be smarter to buy the appropriate data plastic interduct that is sold for this purpose. It's a lot easier to work with and it is cheaper.

Ted

No, the reason for this trick is that you need to keep in mind that all cables have a certain amount of resistance per foot. I forget what it is for standard copper.

With 1 cable you have, say, 1 ohm per 10 feet. With 2 cables you have 1 ohm per

10 feet - but since the cables are in parallel the effect is the same as wiring 2 resistors in parallel - you halve the total resistance. So, the 2 cables make up 1/2 ohm per 10 feet.

Of course, the negatory to this is that since a smaller cable will heat up at lower current volumes, and a hotter cable has a higher resistance, if you try pushing a great deal more current over the 2 wires, they will heat up so their resistance gets higher, and cancels out the parallel wiring effect.

Ted

That does happen.

I have not seen a crimp lug for top post batteries that has a stinger on it. Most welding cable's I have seen were used with top post terminals. Not side post, or Stud terminals.

Seams like alot of extra work, for something un-needed. Using the proper gauge of battery cable, put together correctly will be less head-ache. I still have been told contrary to what your saying by some credible people. Yet who is ever 10000% right, 10000% of the time?

My father & My self ran that back in 1989. When he had a BBS. We had a room dedicated to computers, plus computers in 2 different rooms.

Considering my father was a E.E. who worked with computers, I never questioned him about why. I just did as I was told. His house, his ducts, you know what I mean?

My father got the cable from the design house he worked in. Left overs from when they had installed some. He brought home the crimping tools as well as the proper striping tool.

Back then in 1989 I thought it was as cool as it got. Being able to network a game and data files from one system to another with out having to spend ultra high bucks, or use a slow modem. Hell by comparison my Cable 'modem' blows away my old Hayes from way back when, like a Yugo against a C5-R GTS Class Lemans car.

You don't have to worry about people cussing me in the future at that house. I was a bastard we we got rid of it. I Actually cut the RG's we had run at every visible junction and yanked them out. Including a couple of extra TV cable jacks I had put in. Guess what I did for spite was a good deed after all.

when I moved I took 33 computer cases to the metal yard. I disposed of a 1/4 of boards (mother and cards), chips, and drives. I should have kept one of the old Maxtor 50 MEG! hard drives to show my grand kids, but I wasn't thinking that far a head. I was thinking, man is all of this going to fit in to a storage locker, my apartment, my shop, and my friends barn?

Moving sucks. Charles

remember, I bought the car used - haven't yet changed out everything. Battery in a marine box bolted to the floor. Cables run through the firewall in a huge grommet. + goes to the starter, - to one of the bellhousing bolts.

Ray

Got a couple of local sponsors. Hoping for more next year. Mostly my comment was that we were not allowed certain parts to keep costs down - but I can buy a ported 2 barrel stock intake for $600!!!!! for 15 more hp. Racers always want to go faster... I checked the rules yesterday - my hood - gone - going to replace it with fiberglass sheeting.

Ray

So what you're saying is in reality, two cables can't flow more current than a cable with twice the cross-sectional area.

Well, that's coax cable, so it's not UTP or STP. Not 10BaseT, but

10Base2. Looks like TV cable but smaller.... I hated crimping that stuff.

Ray

So if that's the case, then well you don't want regular battery cables either. You certainly don't want the battery cables sold at parts stores as the terminals will pull right off in those conditions. You want something that is made well. And I would guess that the failures in welding cable come from workmanship issues at the crimped on connectors. Nothing to do with the wire itself as a regular battery cable made in the same shoddy fashion wouldn't hold up either.

Again, I fail to see how there is a difference here. Regular battery cables aren't exactly anything special. Now if you are comparing some nicely made cables using the typical copper strands found in battery cable where the crimps are made well and the ends sealed to something someone made themselves out of welding cable and didn't dot the i's and cross the t's then sure. But I don't see how an apples to apples comparison is going to favor the less flexiable wire.

So? Of course It doesn't matter what cable is used unless it's protected by a grommet or something it's just a matter of time before chafing causes problems.

So that's really the root cause here, the crappy home-made crimps, not the wire.

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.

I've seen the same things on other makes.

And I don't see why with the same attention to detail in workmanship why a welding cable wouldn't last. The only thing I can think of would be the insulation breaking down in a road salt sprayed environment. That's the only thing the welding cable wouldn't have to stand up to. It has to put up with the grease,oil,dirt,cold,hot,ect.... And salt spray doesn't bother most insulation materials, but the wire itself and copper is copper.

My point exactly. I don't sign my posts with letters after my name, but "BSEE, MSEE" are applicable.

The only thing that matters is how much CURRENT these cables can carry without causing voltage loss. The fact that arc welders operate at higher voltage doesn't matter, because they are designed to carry the same CURRENT as automotive battery cables.

Niether were Compact Discs, but they work quite well there.

At only 12 volts of hold-off requirement, welding cable insulation will CERTAINLY get the job done.

Hogwash. Welding cables when used as battery cables should be terminated in high-quality soldered terminals. There's not going to be any breakage if they're prepared correctly. The cables themselves are meant to be dragged around the shop floor, flexed, tugged, stepped on, and driven over. They are MUCH stronger than battery cables. Battery cables are built to be CHEAP and adequate. Welding cables often provide a better margin of excess performance in all categories than battery cables do.

Except offset the voltage drop. I suggest you apply the principles of EE as you suggested. There are tables where you can look up the resistance per unit length of various types of cables. Given that a starter can draw 130+ amps through the cable, and that welding cables are often used when batteries are re-located to the trunk in race cars necessitating much longer cable runs, "over guaging" is a very useful thing to do.

As for the possible weaknesses of welding cable (insulation, termination) this can all overcome by appropriate fabrication techniques and by appropriate choice of insulation material in the cable.

If a breaking motor mount stretches ANY electrical cable, the person who built the car was an idiot.

And if you're proposing that regular old battery cable would somehow survive it, I'll laugh in your face.

I think you guys are mixing methaphors and rewriting electrical engineering rules.

I am not an electrical engineer, although I do sit with one. According to the rules as I understand them,

1) For DC currents, the skin effect is trival, so solid wires carry as much current as stranded wires 2) For DC currents, it is the crosssectional area that matters, so two wires with with the same cross sectional area as a single wire will not carry more current - unless you are worried about the wires heating up. Two independent wires do have more surface area, for dispating heat, than the single wire. However, for most situations, the difference should be trivial and this won't apply to stranded cables anyhow, since the effective surface area is the same as the solid wire.

The arguements about welding versus battery cables has been interesting. I have the following idea based on this arguement:

- Welding cables may or may not have insulation suitable for automotoive use.

- The biggest problem with using welding cables as battery cables is the lack of suitable teminals, although I am not sure that this is actually true. I do comprehend the idea that the thinner strans of welding cable are more easily damaged by typical crimp type battery terminals, but I suspect that better terminal are available and that careful application of commonly avialble terminals can overcome this limitation. Several jumper cable manufacturers actually advertise that they use welding cable.

- Welding cable is not a specification. There are a large number of cables of different gauges and construction styles (stranding, insulation) that are called welding cable. Some are more suitable for automotive use than others.

- Good quality welding cable is likely to be more expensive than similar gauge battery cable.

- Persoanlly, I can see any reason not to use welding cable instead of battery cable as long as you are careful about how you handle the terminals (a crimp terminal reenforces by soldering and shrink tubing to stiffen the connector cable interface seems like a good idea). The increased flexibility of the welding cable would be a plus.

Here are a couple of interesting references:

- aninterestiong article on the use of welding cable in homepower systems - thiscompany claims their welding cable is suitable for batterycables

Thanks for the info.

Ed

I'm not saying a battery cable will suspend a motor. Yet the sure will stop one from coming out even when using a fork lift.

What it will do, if it was laid out properly to begin with, is twist on a torsion axis. Doing so with out snapping apart. Usually a good cable will be able to maintain that for 100 laps or so.

Believe me I have seen things shift further then any one would conceive on a race car. Mount A breaks when the car bumps the wall. Mount B gets fatigued, and lets go, mount point C starts ripping from the strain. I have found engines jammed against the passenger side frame rail, with cracked distributors to boot.

One of the joys of race cars, or any car built to a higher performance level then the maker even intended. Charles