Hi guys!
This is the concluding message about the breakage of the starter lug of the positive battery cable on my car, 05 1638. It is fixed, but it was not easy. To recap a bit: no replacement cable was available anywhere at the time of the failure, which occurred because there was not enough free play in the cable between the starter post and point at which the cable was cable-tied to the frame, so engine movement relative to the frame broke the lug. There appeared to be only two options to fix it: remove the broken lug and crimp a new lug on the wire, or make a new L-shaped lug and solder and bolt it to the remaining (swaged) part of the broken lug. I chose to crimp a new lug on the wire because I thought it was less likely to damage the ends of the cable. That turned out to be incorrect, but who knew? Replacing the cable is not trivial, either - it runs from the battery through the frame and comes out on the left side not far behind the firewall. Of course it has leads going to various things, too, so it would take a lot of disassembly to replace. Finally, be warned that the cable is live all the time, whether the key is on or not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It turned out that the effort to repair it was not trivial. The positive cable consists of two separate wires (2 ga and 6 ga) attached to the single lug that failed. The old lug had to be cut off without damaging the wires, and it was also soldered, so that made it quite a bit more difficult to remove. I could not find a 2 into 1 lug that would work, so I had to source two 45 degree lugs to suit, buy a crimper (lugs and crimper available from Remy Battery in Milwaukee - check out their web site, they have a lot of good stuff), and finally make a bridge of .083" sheet copper to connect the smaller lug to the larger (see photos). I soldered the flat end of the 6 ga lug to the copper plate (and put a 10-32 machine screw through it to make sure it would never come off) and drilled a hole in the other end of the plate so it would be clamped by the 2 ga lug when installed on the starter post. It sounds pretty straightforward now but it took a lot of time, thought, and many trials to figure out how to make it all work, source the parts (a bunch of trial and error), construct the piece, install and test it for continuity and voltage drop, etc. This time I made sure that there is enough free play in the cable to accommodate engine movement relative to the frame by eliminating the cable tie closest to the starter. I finished last Saturday and all seems well. My car is now back together. I suspect the fix is actually stronger than the original, too.
And oh yes - about half way through the process, I was able to get a new cable from a dealer (at twice the list price) so I have a back up. Ford still has no spares in stock and no delivery date. I think that to keep our cars running, availability of spares is going to become increasingly important as time goes on.
In the photos, note how close the starter ground cable is to the starter cable lug - although there is apparently a fusible link in the cable, if that lug fails and the cable grounds, it's still big trouble. Be warned, check your starter cable's free play. It took 30,000 miles for mine to break.
