Correct negative battery cable?

[DAmatt]

Searched both this forum, and the net, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

My current (not sure if original) cables are busted, so I wanted to get the correct ones as replacements. Positive cable was easy, plenty of info, however there are 4 variants of a negative cable that I can't choose from for a 440:

1. 23" round head
2. 23" square head
3. 25" round head
4. 25" square head

Anybody knows which one is the correct one?

[BLK 68 R/T]

For what car/engine?

[birdsandbees]

..and year !

[kent]

68 Charger R/T matching #'s

He's in Europe so a big bus ticket for him.

[moparfan53]

68 Charger R/T matching #'s

He's in Europe so a big bus ticket for him.

Now that we have more info...  

Parts book shows 28" for 1968. The '69 parts book shows 30" which I find strange since the cars are basically the same.  

If you Google the part numbers maybe you will get lucky and find an NOS one with pictures to see the shape.

[69bfan]

We are involved with the manufacturing of the negative and positive battery cables.  The thing about finding NOS or over the counter factory replacement cables is that those part numbers were used up into the late 80s for say a 69 big block B-Body.  When we reproduce a factory battery cable, we will always base the reproduction on a cable that we can document as original to that particular car and year model.  That same part number may have been used for years, but slight modifications which would allow it to work for a number of years on different models and year models allowed Chrysler to keep that part current and to have more coverage.

Like any part, Chrysler had two to three different vendors on the cables.  For cables, most were were either made by Prestolite or Essex.  Thus a difference in head style.  The round nose style has a slight round shape at the end where the bolt comes through the head clamping it to the post.  The square head is just that, it is more squared off on the end where the bolt comes through the end of the lead head.  There is actually very little variation between the round and square end when compared side to side.

We always get the question on how we can justify the cost of our cables being so expensive.  If you should compare a factory cable or one of the better quality cables, you will see that they are considerably heavier than the cheaper alternatives.  The better cables feature quality copper wire and pure lead for the heads and brass on some of the terminals.  The cheaper cables are lightweight aluminum and under severe loads will end up getting extremely hot and loose the ability to safely crank the vehicle.

[DAmatt]

Thanks for all the valuable info guys!

I don't know how I missed giving out all the details for my car, sorry about that.

So the longest available cable is 25", but factory specs were at least 3" longer... I suppose there is room still for the engine movement when on throttle, otherwise they wouldn't be built...right? Tried a search for NOS, alas to no avail. Concluding, what would be the right choice, round or square head? Or did I miss a part of the explanation?

[69bfan]

The majority of the customers buying the 68/69 B-Body negative cable go with the 23 inch cable.  The thing that many people do not realize is that assembly line pieces can deviate from the customer counter piece.  On the assembly line, there may be different cables depending upon the body type, the engine size, etc.  Thus the production plant will place a cable onto the vehicle to best fit the needs of that car.  But for the dealership's part counter, Chrysler does not want to have them inventorying four to six different cables and thus they will develop a cable which will cover all of the bases.  If you look at the copied page of the parts manual, you will see that the same part number covers all of the different engine sizes and body styles.  If you start to examine actual assembly line cables, there were actual differences between big block and small block applications and body styles.  That is why we developed our OE cables off of documented cables from the assembly line pieces.  That is another reason that NOS pieces may not always be assembly line correct for the high end OE restorations.

In regards to the difference in head styles, each vendor had small differences so that the assembly plants could determine the actual vendor for any given part.  That is why I posted above that the variation between the square head to the round head is very minute.  At a quick glance, most people do not even pick up the difference.  So on that particular day, whatever the line worker picked from the box went onto your car. 

Hopes that this may help to clear up some of the confusion.

[DAmatt]

The mists of confusion abated, then finally subsided, thanks! It's little stories like this that make it fun to (at least try to) do a concours restoration. A couple of weeks ago I was learning about how resistors are put inside the air stream of the A/C & heater box to be cooled, all this attention to detail makes you really appreciate all the effort put in by the men and women at Chrysler Corporation back in the day... and perhaps it is one of the reasons that makes people want to pursue a stock restoration, when it could cost less to get something quantitatively better.

Anyway, 69bfan, you got a sale you do have tracking, right? I put the address of a NY company that saves me the hassle of dealing with the wonderful Romanian Customs, and they organize items by tracking #s

[gtx6970]

As a general rule ( its NOT written in stone ) the longer one is small block .