Doing errands today, and this happens. First time the Raider has actually left me stranded in almost 2 years of ownership! But, I had a part in it. I had let the positive battery terminal become a total mess of corrosion, putting off the inevitable battery cable replacement, and now I've put myself in a bind. The truck is currently 20mi from home, in a parking lot. I was only 3 blocks away from O'Reilly's and so after a good cleaning of the battery terminals didn't do it, I went and bought a new cable. And here's where it gets interesting.

The old cable has a bolt-on lug, and those two bolts that clamp the cable down have ring connectors connecting to the wiring harness. The new battery cable has no space for the ring connectors, because it has no bolts, its a molded connector. It does have a smaller second cable around 10ga that has a butt connector on it, but I don't want to cut the harness just yet. The copper ring connectors won't fit under the bolt for the battery terminal.

So, do I take those two ring connectors off, combine the wires together and then crimp them in the new battery cable? Or do I cut the molded battery terminal off the new cable and use a new bolt on style that will allow for the ring connectors? Or is there something else I'm missing here? How are all of your Montero's setup?

I need to head out there tomorrow morning and get this resolved. Any help you guys can give is appreciated.

Positive or negative? Either way, you should be able to find the correct cables that swap right in. I just did both on mine last week. Also, Google "click click click start" and read that thread as a plan b in case the new cables don't work.

Did you check the battery terminals because some times they are full of corrosion and they do not provide the enough power to connectors. and also be careful about negative and positive terminals. because if they connect wrong then it can harm your battery.

<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Did you read his post? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Like I said in the threads, its the positive one. And I went to three parts stores today and none of them had anything other than the molded battery terminal. When you did yours, where did you get your battery cables?

The battery terminal was really really bad, and I cut off some cable and got some fresh copper and put it all back together, and the problem was inexplicably worse. Then I wiggled the battery cable at the starter and I heard the truck power up. So, I know the cable is bad. I just don't want to do any more wire hacking than needed to get this thing going again.

Oops, I missed reading "positive" in the original thread...crazy phone!

I was having a similar issue over the past month. On occasion I'd have to get out and wiggle the positive terminal or tap it with something to get power (even though it was tight). I replace the positive battery post terminal only with one of these from Advance Auto Part:



I found that the leaded ones don't work as well.

I also made a very nice battery tie down which I never had previously. Everything was great and then the next day I get "click click dead" again. UG! So I start messing around with the positive terminal. It wont budge and the battery is also secure. Out of frustration I hit the negative terminal with a hammer and bingo! The truck comes to life. So then I went back to Advance Auto and picked this up:



I cut off the old negative cable from the harness and installed this one. I wiz-wheeled all of the old remaining connections and a place on the body to make sure the ground is good.

So far this seems to have resolved the issue.

I had similar issue and ended up changing whole thing out similar to MBrannon. In the end I still had issues with the old wire going down to starter solenoid. I ended up placing a ford solenoid set-up in and running it down to the starter. My starter wasn't getting enough voltage to kick over, especially if it was hot. There is a thread somewhere of how to do this. -My be the clicky clicky n start thing Matt was saying to look up. If not search Ford solenoid a few years back.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. The big obstacle here for me was getting the main fusible links connected to power, when they previously went under the battery cable clamp, and the new styles only have a molded connector (no bolts to put the ring eyelets under) so nowhere to put them. So, I thought about it last night and came up with a solution. I cut off the butt connector on the new battery cable, and put an ring connector on it. Then I connected that ring connector with the ones coming from the wiring harness with a 1/4" bolt, nut and washers in between each ring connector. Started right up! Here's a crappy picture to you can see what I am talking about:

Wait a minute. You're using a black wire for the positive lead? Secondly, if that's positive, you have to wrap that connection or it will short out the first time it touches something metal!

John B.

Yes, its black. I don't care, the parts store sold black ones. And yes its unprotected. I will fix that, I left it just until I got home. Gotta wrap it in some sort of tape.