Who makes the best battery cables, is the extra cost of 2ga over 8ga worth it, maybe even have some custom made at my local welding supply store, what do ya think.

Thanks

 

Any of the name brand aftermarket soft flexible ones with lots of strands have worked fine for us. The gauge size should be matched to your battery/starting system. To get the right ones contact the manufacturer as they can have different reccomendations. Hope this helps.

 

Just curious but what's wrong with the factory installed cables? Mine are 11 years old and I've never had any problems with them. Should I be concerned?

 

There's nothing wrong with factory cables. Mine are 25 years old... oops, 26 years old and work just fine.

 

From what I understand the aftermarket cables have better conductance. When I got a 1.4kW starter it said I needed the upgraded cables for starter performance.

 

Yup, big fat starter and big inch motor needs fat cables. The best ones are the fattest ones that you can cram in there. I use orange multi strand welding cable as thick as a fat finger and put my own connectors on.

 

Aftermarket cables would only have better conductance if you're going to a larger diameter cable. But, with the upgraded starter it makes sense now why you're interested in upgrading the cables.

I'm guessing from another post that the factory cables are 8 guage? What gauge wire did the starter manufacturer recommend?

 

Actually conductance is affected by both size of wire and materials used in construction of the wire. (All materials have an inherent resistance it is just some materials are less resistant than others.) It is possible to have 2 different wires with the same gauge with different conductivity. That said I don't remember what gauge wires I got to replace the stock ones but they looked pretty much the same. The construction process was differant though.

 

That's true but how many manufacturers do you know that are making cables out of anything but copper? Until they start making battery cables out of silver (a better conductor than copper) wire diameter is the only real consideration.

 

Actually a little more than diameter comes into play. Just to use some numbers lets say the stock cable has 30 strands of copper wire, and the aftermarket has 60 strands of smaller wire in the same final gauge (lets say 8 gauge for the sake of this example). If you look at the cross section of both you would see more air space in the 30 strand than in the 60 strand. As we all know copper conducts electricity, not air. With more conducters you have the ability for more power to the starter in this case. Also the ends are usually better and affixed to the cable as well, again this allows more power to be available. Hope this helps.