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My beetle has been up on jack stands for four months. It's a good time to do a little battery maintainence, and I took some quick time yesterday and this evening to finish replacing the battery cables.
This is something that I've wanted to do since I bought the car. The stock cable that goes from the positive battery terminal to the starter input is black. That's not so bad, but at some point, someone replaced the cable from the negative battery terminal to the car's body with a red battery cable. So in other words, looking under the seat when I got the car, there was a black cable on the positive terminal and a red cable on the negative terminal, which is the opposite of most cars and any wire color convention that I've ever heard of. Not too long after I got the car, I replaced the red wire to the body with a ground strap, which got rid of the color problem but it didn't fit the terminal very well.
The other problem is the wierd right angle of the positive battery terminal makes it really hard to put a shield over the positive terminal. This is very important because the springs of the back seat can short against the positive terminal and start a fire if the terminal isn't covered.
I bought a platinum platinum positive battery terminal last week. This terminal has two pressure screw attachment points that accept a 4 gauge wire, or an 8 gauge wire with the reducing collar. The collar and one of the set screws can be seen in the second photo:
I've installed the new red cable to the starter and attached it to the terminal. The other attachment on the terminal goes to the electrical system in the rest of the car. I've also installed a black ground cable here whose end actually fits the battery terminal.
