Battery Cables Replacement Length? (Big 3) - Corolland: the Toyota Corolla Forums

Hi,

Can anyone tell me what the length of the cables are on the 01 Corolla CE? I cant for the life of me find the measurements. I am going to replace it with 4/0 gauge wire with copper lug terminals. Do I need to do anything additional to the positive cable since the original travels through the engine wiring harness behind the intake manifold?

I just recently replaced my terminal ends because of a no start situation and it fixed it, but I cut away about 6 inches of insulation on each cable and there was greenish-blue corrosion the whole way down the center. I taped it back up and installed the new terminals. So I am just going to replace all three cables (i'm not sure where the third is?) and call it a day. Starter has started to drag a little starting the car afterwards and I had the battery and alt tested on and off the car at several stores just to be sure they were actually good. I'm sure a starter and/or solenoid rebuild is in the future, but I'm just going to press forward under the assumption it's the cables.

4/0 gauge wiring? How much juice are you planning to run?

That is thicker than the welding cable I use - the conductor itself is almost 1/2" thick, with the jacket - almost as big around as my thumb. If you can get it pretty cheap, sure, why not - but will be sort of a pain to route around.

As for lengths - I know that there was a post on this forum that indicated wire lengths - can't find it right now. When I did my Big 3 - I just cut mine to length on the spot, as I had a spool left over from a project.

Corrosion along the copper wire is pretty normal - that patina actually helps slow future corrosion. Just have to make sure the end points, ie. battery terminal and mounting point are clean, hit them with some grease or CRC battery terminal spray to keep corrosion from getting too extreme.

4/0 is serious over kill, 4 or 6 gauge pure copper cable is perfectly plenty. The problem with buying thick cable online from places like ebay is often you get copper clad aluminum cable which is about a 20% capacity penalty when compared to the same thickness copper cable. I love using welding cable for automotive since it's high strand count and super flexible, it's easy to get the ends to take a tinning to prevent corrosion, and it's fairly inexpensive when bought online. I've got some left over from my audio install that I've been slowly using here and there.