More Power!

The battery terminals on my 280z were pretty chewed up from years of connections of charge and jumper cable clamps.  Since cables are cheap and I was working on the starter I thought I'd simply replace the cables to clean things up.  To do this I would need cables that supported an accessory as I wanted to avoid a stack of terminal rings on the clamp bolts.

In researching the electrical accessory connections on the battery I found some interesting information:

1. The connections from both the positive and negative terminals led directly to the Bosch L-JetTronic fuel injection control unit (The L stands for "luft" meaning that the fuel mixture was controlled by an air vane).
2. The positive connection was supposed to include a fusible link which had been removed from my car at some point.
3. The electrical connectors used for these wires were no longer manufactured.  I want to retain as much of a factory look as possible so using normal spade connectors wasn't appealing to me.  I found a company that reproduces older Japanese connectors for motorcycle restoration.  Many of the connectors used by Nissan were offered from his website: http://www.vintageconnections.com/Products/Connectors .  The specific connectors for this work were located here: http://www.vintageconnections.com/Products/Detail/140 .  I ended up ordering several different types in the event that I need to replace any in the future; you never know how long treasure troves like this will be available!
4. The proper size fusible link is .5 mm squared.  I derived this from the information at the following links:
1. http://datnissparts.com/x-green-fusible-link-at-battery-datsun-75-77-s30-280z-24022-u2700-24022-n4200-24022-89905/
2.  http://www.carpartsmanual.com/datsun/Z-1969-1978/electrical/wiring/engine-room-(dec-74-to-jul-76)
3. http://datsun1200.com/modules/mediawiki/index.php?title=Fusible_Link

Creating the fusible link was no more exciting than crimping two of the female connectors on each end of an 8" length of the proper sized (8mm sq) fusible link wire.  I also carefully soldered the wire to the connectors as I prefer this extra bit of insurance when dealing with automotive connections; I say carefully because this is fusible link wire and you don't want to heat it up too much.

It was more of the same when attaching the new connectors to the accessory wires on the new battery terminals as well as the L-JetTronic power wires.  One thing to be certain of is that the positive and negative wires have different connectors as you don't want the possibility of reversing the polarity to the control unit!  From the factory the negative wire from the control unit has a female connector.  The fusible link has female connectors on both ends.

The finished product looked much cleaner than the previous setup of chewed up terminals, crimped splices and broken connectors!