I'm stupid and broke my positive battery cable terminal - the end that is attached to the cable. I see the replacement (A2044408350) is the entire like 30' cable which I assume takes the most circuitous and least convenient route to the alternator or wherever. I'm not doing that.

Can someone who knows more than me tell me about how these things are terminated from the factory? I'm reading all about hydraulic crimpers etc and wondering if that's the best way to go or not. Aren't these things soldered?

I'm NOT looking for the easiest or cheapest way to do this. I'm looking for the best way to repair the end outside of buying the whole stupid cable.

My gut instinct is to just buy a nice high quality clamp (with more accessory connecting options or posts on it), rent the hydraulic crimper, cut the old end off, crimp on the new end without losing any fingers, and that's it. But something tells me that it's probably more complicated than that...

Thanks

 

I know what I'd do, but seeing as you've stated that you don't want to hear the simplest ideas (which I'm sure you know what they'd be anyway), I'm going to sub to the thread purely to see what the most thorough way of doing this job is for the sake of learning. Goodluck BLK. Sounds like an annoying issue to have to deal with.

 

I'd just use a quality screw-clamp terminal.
https://www.autozone.com/batteries-s...6078/95974_0_0

 

I'm with whoover on this one... What's the failure rate difference on a screw clamp connecter vs. a hydraulically crimped one? .0001%?

Cut, Strip, & Screw (the battery cable of course... I know you are in L.A so that could apply to other parts of your day)

 

Now THIS wins the internet for the day!

 

Wrong


Wrong but points for style


Thanks dude. It's just so dumb, I wish I had a better story. I'm making the interior look nicer while stripping more stuff out. Part of this was to carpet the trunk area (+0.5lb) and where the rear seats were (+0.25lb), and make a new battery holder. The loom/tape on all the power/ground wires was falling apart from me moving everything around so I wanted to clean it up while also getting the wires out of the way, properly terminated, shrink-wrapped, loomed and rerouted in a more logical way. I guess at some point the tightening nut on the clamp was cross-threaded or maybe just wasn't supposed to come all the way off, because it took most of the threads off with it. That square-headed bolt doesn't seem to come out, like at all. I could saw out that bolt and just stick any old bolt back in with a self-locking nut, but I have like 5 power wires dangling off of the one auxiliary post as it is now, and it's just a mess. If this wasn't too hard, maybe an opportunity to just put a more robust clamp on there with more space for the auxiliary power connections. Make it cleaner. Maybe not.

I was looking for a way to make the connection as close to or better than the factory connection. Not the cheapest or easiest way, but the most robust and secure way. I know how important it is for these cars to get good power at all times with zero chance of interruption, and I would never trust a screw-on clamp for the power terminal.

Like this: https://www.custombatterycables.com/...nals/#idp_id_2

 

 

Sorry, haven't read this too carefully so not sure if these are applicable butt here's two approaches.


Or: The 'ultimate' approach would be to run an all-new positive wire.

For a more economical approach, I'd recommend this ...

Get a small heavy-duty 'junction block' or 'distro / distribution block' (small electrical connector box containing terminal posts).

Mount the block in a secure / convenient location in the engine bay.

Re-route your stock wires to the block's terminals, then add two new lines from those terminals to the battery posts.

This approach is 'modular', preserves the stock wiring harness, and allows for flexible reconfiguration (of the new lines) if you need to do so later.

After years of wrestling with limited battery choices, custom hold-downs, oddball battery positioning, etc., I gave up and took my Taco to an electrical specialty shop to have my wire harness totally redone. The tech suggested this approach, and it worked just fine. I've been kicking myself ever since for not thinking of it myself ...

 

Just checked the local hardware store for ya, there's quite a few screw types but nothing else for terminal repair

 

Yeah thanks. I’m probably making this harder than it really needs to be, but I’m just really focused on cleaning up this wire mess the best I can. If I can make it better with minimal pain, bonus.

 

So, the battery terminal is still fine, but the clamping bolt of the terminal is stripped?
Bring the car to a machine shop and have them bring out maybe a mag drill.
Or rent a mag drill from Home Depot.
Then drill out the old bolt and put in a new bolt.
The bolt and the terminal are dissimilar galvanic properties and will fuse together in any car.

If you really broke the crimp of the terminal into the wiring harness, that is a bad thing.

Why are you so negative about replacing the wiring harness?
Seems like you've been around the car's infrastructure.
This is the best designed car that I've had to day.
There are luxurious cable trays and wireways under the carpeting and sound deadening.
You'd think you're in a telco room.
Baskets with covers, cable waterfalls, it's all there.
And since you seem like you have the carpets out, it would be probably a day job for you to ID the cable trays, cut a few zip ties and lay out the replacement.
If you're a tech that ever worked in a telco room, this will be fun.
As far as soldering.
Yes, I was disappointed to see that the W204 is not soldered, like the W124 and W126.

But in the past, I also prefer to solder my wiring. So when I converted my Subaru to HID headlights, I soldered all the pigtails and connectors.
After 2 years of use, two of the soldering broke, due to heat cycling and vibrations. They did not separate from the copper, but the bead broke in half.
I do think that soldering is ultimate, but the composition of the solder has to be for automotive use.
I did resolver my Subaru with bigger beads and supported them, to avoid vibration damage.
Btw, not only were the old Mercedes soldered, but all connector were in house designed Mercedes modular connectors.
These don't have needle size steel pins, but 2 mm copper tubes for pins. Every tube/pin is soldered with the conductor.
The amperage capacity must be crazy.
I'll post a pic.
Also all fully serviceable and easy to refurbish.

Look, I saw when I was working on the lumbar, Mercedes engineers every piece of copper in the harness. You have on the same circuit 4 conductors leaving in parallel to go to the lumbar control box. Then they crimp down to 3, 1 ft later, then they crimp down to 2, then to 1.
It looks like a sprinkler system, where the size of the diameter of the pipe is calculated based on the distance where it goes, to maintain constant pressure in the hydraulic system.
With such a system, it would be a mistake to go in there and start snipping and crimping.

 

Thanks for that Vladds. I mean, it's not like broken broken. The clamp itself is still viable. It's just the bolt/nut are all FUBAR. I recognized that they are made out of some strange alloy - is it tin, is it lead, is it zinc-plated or something else I don't know.

So two questions:

1) I had a feeling that I can't just shove any old bolt in there for the reason you pointed out. What do I do if I just want to repair what's there? Do I need a special battery terminal bolt/nut?

2) If I wanted to take off the busted terminal end to put on something with more connection options, what do you think is the best way to go about that? Cut and crimp? Screw clamp? Some sort of weld or super solder?

Thanks

 

In the past, the terminal was made out of lead.
Lead is dangerous and many have not seen a lead technician operate.
Lead has a melting point almost as low as solder and usually gets melted with a butane lamp or back in the 80's with a gasoline vapor lamp.

My opinion about why the current terminal is made of on the w204, is that it's still lead, but probably with a protective coat.

So I don't think this is crimped to the copper conductor but melted and "soldered" to the copper.
I think that a machine heats and shapes the terminal to the large gauge copper positive wiring harness. Then it gets some sort of safety paint over.
In short, you won't be able to replicate this aftermarket.
I have to wonder why manufacturers still use steel for the bolts.
I do have a dynamite idea for this:
(I've seen a situation of this nature at work with some Aluminum street lighting poles and steel bolts, corroded on a bridge even before the project was commissioned and considered what would fix this but the budget did not allow for my fix)
Use one Titanium bolt. It will not react to anything. Matching nut or nylon insert nut.

 

As far as replacing the battery terminal with something aftermarket:
I'm a mechanical engineer and this is a question for an electrical engineer.
I'll take a guess but electrical guys correct me if I'm wrong:
Amperage is what matters the most with a battery:
Amperage demand from the car's electrical grid and amperage throughput from the battery and alternator.
There are things that influence amperage throughput.
I think that maybe the most important is contact area.
With a melted lead connector, like the factory one, every single copper wire in the maybe 6 strands or so of the main copper cable of the factory harness, is surrounded by the material of the terminal.
So we have maybe 3-400 copper wires as thick as a hair (I exaggerate) and there's is melted lead around the circumference of each of them.
This is how you maximize contact area and amperage throughput.
If you use a clamp, you have the 300 wires and only the outer ones, let's say 60 are in direct contact with the clamp.
The throughput is reduced.....

 

something like this?

Do you have a picture of how you broke it

 

If it's just the clamp bolt, what do you have against a standard replacement, like:
https://www.acehardware.com/departme...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

That’s probably what I’ll do. Sounds like something that should just be fixed if at all possible.

Thanks for the responses guys.