GROUND/STARTER CABLES...

[Chuey]

In reply to the original post: I asked here whether the fifty dollar cables on e-bay were worth it. I asked a few months ago. The consensus was basically that yes, it would cost about that to make cables of that quality. It seems like a fairly forthright endeavor for the seller to have invested in top quality parts and make up a very fine set of cables. I'm planning on buying some for my bikes. Not a lot of bling for fifty bucks but it sounds like it is very good upgrading of a part of the system that goes unnoticed until something is actually acting up.

Chuey

[dwire]

Good deal. My apologies for not giving an opinion on that specific matter earlier.

My only question is the price being so high. We made our own on machines locally for all but rare applications, or where OEM or aftermarket were simply the best solution and were of adequate quality and doing so SAVED us money, not cost us more... Hmmm...

Duane's procedures detailed above, as per the norm are spot on. (No surprise...)

[dwire]

We found failing battery cables within 3 years of new. The OEM cables are not of quality and BMW really should have done better.

When we found a starter issue, our first action was to reach down on each side and grab a battery cable. Try to rotate it on the battery post. If it rotates, then the action of rotation is often enough to correct to some degree the high resistance. That is no fix, just a fast way to get the bike on the road, or for our shop purposes, to test it. If things improve, then we know that some error exists. If there is no change, then it doesn't mean that all is well, it just means that this quick and dirty test didn't show it.

As far as the cables are concerned, here is what we found commonly. The crimping of the terminal on the wire was done without any grease, or sealing. The result is that moisture could wick up the wire just past the terminal and corrode the copper. If the wire were soaked in grease and then sealed up from moisture laden air, the wire up under the first inch or so would not corrode.

The usual symptom is that the wire is flexible to some extent. If it is less flexible in the last inch just next to the terminal, wala, you have found it. One more symptom usually exists too. That is that the corrosion expands the contents under the insulation. The insulation can be seen to be slightly swolen, but not a lot. So if the wire is stiffer near the terminal, you have a problem. Strip it down, warm it up, soak it in grease so that it wicks up into the individual strands of copper and crimp on another terminal. Use shrink to seal it up.

As an inspector of just this type of copper cable crimping, the technician must also clean off the terminal. Depending upon the specific metal plating on the terminal, it can slightly discolor. That is oxidation, clean it off so that it is bright and shiny. The battery terminal must also be cleaned off well. Coat both with grease and connect.

Bad connections can be the bane of the mechanic. Just a bit of prevention can save so much headache later.

I won't go into the various ways of testing, but all require some knowledge of Ohm's law to make use of them. It is easy to make voltage measurements and have them mean nothing at all. That is a whole nother conversation.

I do some work in cellular telephone site inspections. Commonly we have a ton of batteries for storage. The cables are as thick as your finger and carry hundreds of amps of current. Our tyypical battery string is capable of 10 times the capacity of a large electric welder. That can be really exciting when someone flashes the terminals by carelessness.

Any error in crimping and connecting can be costly and hard to find. Using strict standards on your motorcycle will pay in greatly increased reliability of the wiring. It isn't difficult, but at first seems obsessive/compulsive.

Please indulge me for a war story. Our rubber insulated cables are so heavy that a 50 foot piece laid out on a linoleum floor will stick to the floor so well that it is impossible to pull it along the floor. However, a simple trick will allow it. Just whip it so that a loop runs down the length of the wire, all the while pulling on it. The "whip" unsticks it from the floor and allows it to be pulled. Just don't stop until you get where you are going with the cable.

It is almost impossible for one person to run this sticky cable through the overhead racks that we call "cable tray". The dirty trick is before even taking the cable into the shelter, lay it in the dirt. Toss dirt/dust on the outside rubber insulation and shake off any extra. With it unrolled, clean off the excess with a rag. However, some dust stays on and is not noticeable, but allows it to glide on a smooth surface. Now the cable will be much easier to thread up, over, around and through the cable trays. Now that I am not doing the installing of the cable and now doing the inspections, I can tell which installers know how to handle the cables. We aren't supposed to pass it, but it actually gives a better job. The dust also allows the cables to not get so kinked up due to a twist. shhh, don't tell.

Hey Duane, they make cheap crushed glass powder (looks like powdered sugar, but does NOT taste like it...) just for that sort of thing; its used in industry to help feed the same type sticky rubber parts though feeder bowls and feed systems. I'd bet it is likely already approved for pulling and threading cable on those overhead cable trays you are talking about. I turned skilled trades onto the stuff at several GM facilities and it worked well for their new installs on the same aluminum runners you are speaking of. Food for thought. Dirt is free though in retrospect...

[Duane Ausherman]

I am not surprised, but am quite glad to hear of a product. We had no knowledge of it. People get quite creative when they need something NOW.

I have found it common for one industry to not have knowledge of technology of another industry. The person who "brings it over" seems like a genius to the rest.

[dwire]

I am not surprised, but am quite glad to hear of a product. We had no knowledge of it. People get quite creative when they need something NOW.

I have found it common for one industry to not have knowledge of technology of another industry. The person who "brings it over" seems like a genius to the rest.

Yeah, so true, but indeed no one would ever dare accuse me of any sort of brilliance... I am with you as well, I have more often been on the "receiving end" of such things and always wonder, "Gee why either did I not think of that, or already know of such things???"

The powder is readily available from a lot of sources, I can't really elaborate more as all I likely could remember is its "DM" spec number (DELCO-MORANE) but everyone who feeds rubber parts through automated systems and vibrating feed bowls would be familiar with it and could turn your cell install friends on to the stuff in a giant powder keg that would likely outlive me for that application...

I like your mention of the "waveform" trick on the cables sticking to the floor as I've used it as well. - Reminds me of my youth, hitting guy wires on very tall commercial antennae towers and watching the waves travel to the top and back and then looking for the sympathetics and such to cancel it out and break up the fun. So much can be learned often from the simplest of things. Plus as kids I guess we were "easily amused."

[Ken in Oklahoma]

I've been making my own battery cables for a while now. The result is, IMNSHO, much better than new stock BMW cables.

For the cable part I use #4 AWG "lead" cable, or at least that's what I think it's called. It is commonly used for connecting the arc welder “high” to the electrode holder. The cable has a rubber insulation (not PVC or other plastic) and has fine wire strands for flexibility. This is a wonderful cable, if you've ever wrestled with the stock BMW cables trying to get them to lay correctly. It naturally costs more than cheaper cable, but you will end up with a battery cable that will cost much less than the eBay cables.

I cut the ground cable to length a few inches longer than the stock BMW cables. This gives me some flexibility (no pun intended) if I use a non stock battery with the positive and negative posts on different sides from the stock battery. The longer ground cable also allows me to use a different grounding point on the L/H side of the transmission, thus eliminating the possibility of stripping the threads in the usual location at the speedometer take off point.

For the cable ends I use plain #4AWG ring terminals. So far I have only found these in copper. I would like to find the steel version for durability.

Strip about a half inch of rubber jacket away and you're ready to fix the terminal onto the cable. This is where you need to make a special tool to do the crimp that is required. I measure the O.D. of the ring terminal barrel and find a drill bit of the same diameter or slightly larger. Then I drill a hole in a piece of hardwood, say about 1/2" thick. Aluminum or even steel would work fine too.

Now I cut half of the hole (or less) off the hole I just drilled away, leaving a half hole. This will be your anvil for crimping the terminal onto the cable. I hold the anvil in a vice for the actual crimping operation.

Now you need to make a punch to do the crimping operation. For this I ground the end of an old chisel, rounding it so that the indentation in the ring terminal will be smooth. A mild steel rod with the end ground appropriately would work too.

You’re already figured out the rest. You put the terminal on over the bare wire, hold it in place on the anvil, barrel split downward, then smack the barrel part of the terminal with a hammer and punch. You’ll have to judge how much is enough.

Now I will hold the freshly installed terminal in a vice and solder the connection. Rosin core solder of course. I hold the terminal with the cable pointing up. That is so gravity will help wick the solder in the correct direction. I use a small butane torch with its precise flame for heat. A large soldering iron would work too, and you wouldn’t have to be careful of the flame. Be careful because the solder will still wick upward and you will have stiffened about an inch of the cable before you know it. You can guess how I figured out this bit of wisdom.

Putting some shrink tubing over the junction will make the job look professional.



Ken

[dougie]

Thanks so much for that. Excellent instructions.
Everything I need to know to do it myself this winter.
Just have to find those materials here.

[Ken in Oklahoma]

There's a lot of good information in this topic, and I've saved some of it to my computer for future reference.

This is a bit off topic to this topic, but when dealing with starter issues commonly the battery condition comes into question. For my money the best way to resolve questions about the battery condition is to load test it. For that Harbor Freight sells two resistive load testers. I bought the smaller one on sale. And you can find 20% off coupons in many popular magazines like popular mechanics and sometimes in the local Sunday paper.

The tester is brutally simple (or so I believe) with a volt/amp meter and a press-to-test switch to apply the load. You apply the positive and negative tester leads to the battery and note the voltmeter. The voltmeter also has color scales indicating cold cranking amps and color scales indicating acceptable voltage drop. You press the button for 10 seconds and see what you've got.

I'm not sure I believe the readings I'm getting. For example I question whether a new charged lead acid motorcycle battery will really deliver up to 600CCA. But even if the reading is off, it works well on a comparative basis. This simple test allows me to say that this battery is pretty damn good or not worth a dam.

Just a thought.


Ken

'

[Garnet]

Doug,

You stil haven't determined that you actally need new cables. Other than crappy crimp connections, battery cables don't wear.

Take your multimeter and set it on the 10V DC scale. Attach the posative lead to the posative battery post (not the bolt or cable). Attach the negative lead of the meter to the posative post of the starter solinoid (where the +battery cable runs to). The volt meter will read 0

Hit the starter button and the meter will give a reading. You should read well below .5 of a volt. That is how much less voltage the solinoid is seeing compared to the battery. Anything close to 1v means that you have high resistance under load and need to clean or replace.

This takes less time to do than it took me to type out and can be used all over the eletrical system where high loads travel, battery ground cable, negative battery terminal to starter body, diode board to ground and diode board to battery are just a few checks that this works on.

[dwire]

Tricky, tricky... Good to use lots of places, but help me out...

I like it and use it elsewhere but, how does it not tell him that the contacts are worn in the solenoid, the ground to the same is no good??? Not sure I get it. The only way that meter reads any DC is with a complete circuit, the only way it gets that is through the solenoid - unless of course I have not had enough coffee yet...

I am quite interested, but at a loss why when you could just measure the cables' resistance and as well when you disconnect it/them, you can not only work the ends around doing so, but also be ready to move on to taking a current measurement of the starter draw if you need to move forward...

Also Duane mentioned the obvious that I did not, one should always just grab the cables and wiggle them around. It's such second nature, I never thought to mention it... As he said, this is not the solution, but provides data...