OEM Battery Cable Replacement

[klowderm]

Although I have referred to this site often, this is my first post. I am finding it very difficult to locate and purchase OEM battery cables for my 1998 Explorer XLT 4.0 SOHC (w/o Message Center). The dealer no longer carries the part and I have yet to find an online source to purchase from. The part # is 14300(WC-9450-A) and is also referred by part # F87Z14300HA. Any information would be most helpful as I am experiencing the poorly engineered inner-cable corrosion issue. Thanks in advance!

 

[koda2000]

do you absolutely need the entire cable, or is it just the terminals that are bad?

 

[klowderm]

Since I am not the original owner, I am not sure if the cables have ever been replaced. I would much rather replace the entire cable to eliminate any guesswork with any unseen corrosion. Even a schematic of an existing cable would be good, I could possibly piece together my own.

 

[Freight Peddler]

I bought my cables at O'reilly a couple months ago. They looked up in the computer what lengths were needed and I got that length cable from their battery cable display wall. Fit just fine.

 

[gsbarry]

I just finished replacing my battery cables - that was unnecessarily difficult. I decided to cut away the sheathing on the old cables to inspect the condition of the copper. This is what I found:

This looks like heat damage from the exhaust presumably. The factory setup has a heat insulator midway up - although I noticed only around the positive cable - but not at the bottom near the starter, which is where I found this blackening of the copper on both cables.

Has anyone seen this before? If I'm right, and this is heat damage, it makes me want to find additional heat insulation for the bottom section of cable to prevent recurrence of this issue.

 

[bill06447]

Rock Auto stocks all 3 of them for your truck...

Bill

 

[gsbarry]

bumpity bump bump... to the heat damage question in post #5 above

 

[Steeda04SVT]

So how hard is it to just replace the cable or just even the part that connects to the battery terminal?

 

[gsbarry]

I had to replace the entire cable, which was a major PITA. Replacing the terminal only is easy, but I have seen posts advising people to stay away from the cheap lead terminals.