Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Duratec Maintenance battery wires freyed

has anyone had this problem where the red coating on the posative battery wires going into the fuse box were all freyed and most the the plastic coating had dry rotted and came off.

this happened to me this weekend and i was driving down the road and the car shut off. well 1st thing i check is my chip cause if it dis lodges the car shuts off. wasnt the chip then i checked the battery and it has spark and i wiggled the wires and it started.

so then when i got home it took me 2 hours cause i had to pull the battery, and the fuse box and wrap all the wires in 3 coats of electrical tape. well now i have a reason to relocate the battery to the trunk hu.

Yeah I have a problem very similar to that. I'm geussing this is why I get such odd voltage problems. Something on my list to do.

Battery cables are always a good prev. maint. item ppl forget. Changed em on the SHO but the ones on the Tour still look good.

Todd, do you know what guage it is...

it looked like 10 guage but i may be wrong

yep, mine corroded and broke from neglect I'd been having some weird problems where the engine would just cut out but come back almost instantaneously, but I couldn't figure out why.

One day the car wouldn't start, and when I was checking connections I tugged on the cable and it came away in my hands. The accessories came on but I guess the contact was intermittent to where the starter couldn't pull the amps. Bought and installed a new terminal, cleaned everything up, applied some dielectric grease, used some heatshrink to patch up the frayed insulation.

be sure to look down by where the positive goes to the starter and the negative goes to the bell housing, I have seen three contiques, including my mystique, that had thess rub together and start shorting out, mine almost caught fire and the starter wouldnt quit cranking even with the engine running, I had to pull off the side of the raod and shut it off, then jump out and disconnect the battery terminals so my car didnt go up in smoke.