For reference, the cable is thicker than a AA size duracell battery and the copper core about the size on the battery negative plate
BHPian dr.dre recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
I had a bit of a scare recently due to my Thar D MT battery going completely dead. Was on the outskirts of the city with family for a get together. Reached the venue around 12 noon, the car started in the morning with first crank and showed no sign of weakness or struggle. I come to the car at 6pm, the doors unlocked and car wouldn’t crank. After 1 try, the MID went blank as well, with no juice to even power the MID.
I was planning a long road trip in few months, so the service adviser had suggested that it would good if I replaced the OEM battery before the trip, but its good to go for now.
Well, coming back to the issue, I had my friends thar as well and couple of petrol hatchbacks. He was also carrying jumper cable from Amazon Basics, don’t recall the gauge though. For some reason it did not help either. We couldn’t start the thar, we tried push start, that did not work as well. Last option was to swap the battery, we removed the dead one and my friend’s is a RWD model, we did not have the right size tool to remove one bolt and we were stuck. This being a bit off the city, used local help to visit a battery shops, nearby, they were all closed. Finally tried one number from google, this gentleman agreed to source a battery from another shop 30 or so kms away.
It took him 1.5 hrs, but he was there with a super thick jumper cable, a 100AH battery, plus a replacement exide model. He first tried his jumper cable and the car started in one crank.
I decided to replace the OEM battery nevertheless, he put in new one and everything was working perfectly.
We enquired on why our cable did not work, he suggested its best to fabricate our own copper jumper cable, and that most sold in market do not enough capacity to crank bigger cars especially diesels.
Got home, hit Team-BHP to research a bit and finally got one fabricated today. Bought 75 sqmm copper welding cable 3m x 2. Welding cables are designed to be durable, flexible, take high current loads and is more abuse resistant from sparks, abrasion etc. Got two pairs of heavy duty clamps and shop helped me crimp and fix it. He was a wholesale dealer of welding and other equipments, had all the tools handy.
Yet to try this cable, but here are some pics. For reference, the cable is thicker than a AA size duracell battery and the copper core about the size on the battery negative plate. Keeping my fingers crossed. Please note that the cable used by the battery guy was several times thicker, stiff and very heavy. He could hardle bend it while trying to connect it to the battery, i guess he will need it for much bigger vehicles etc.
Experts let me know if i need to make any modifications to the current set up, don’t want to be stranded again!
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