Dear Keith, Brian, Good Dr. and mid-60s Buick caregivers,
Thanks for your suggestions!
However, I think people will understand the problem better with a few pictures. Here is the battery in Biquette:
Unfortunately there are a lot of connections for all the after-market accessories. You can see the Battery Tender cable going over the top of the battery and ending up in a section of white tape in the upper left corner of the picture (more on that later.) Here is where the cable emerges from the grill:
As you can see, the cable is so short that it is barely long enough to get outside where I can connect it.
I just put the cap on the cord and and tuck it to the side of the battery when not in use on the Cobra.
Yes that does work fine and I am doing that when Biquette goes on an extended trip. However, I was hoping to come up with an arrangement similar to what I have on our 2000 Buick Century. I run the Battery Tender connector so it can pass under the bumper and I have a small cup made of PVC pipe to hold the connector when we are using the car. When I come home, I reach under the bumper and retrieve the connector so that I can plug it in. I would like to come up with something similar for Biquette so I don't have to open the hood every time I take her out or bring her home.
I have extended them before. I cut the ring terminals off the end that connects to the battery, then spliced on more wire by soldering/heat shrinking the connection, then put new ring terminals on the end of the wire extension.
That is what I was imagining. I was hoping to avoid more than one splice by buying a second connector. It would be cleaner and safer.
You could take the 6 ft cable and cut it in half, then remove four or five feet and splice it back together.
Yes I could do that, but I really need just a short section. It seems a bit silly to stow away that connector when this area of the engine bay is already extremely crowded and will get a bit more crowded when I finally get around to upgrading the headlights. That's why I was leaning toward a splice of some sort.
Where the cable is emerging at the moment, there is some rough metal edges that have scuffed up the wire insulator. I put the white electrical tape as a temporary repair, but I do need to come of with something more permanent. Here is one last picture:
At the moment the connector can be tucked in between the sheet metal of the outer fender and the grill and it seems reasonably secure, but what I would love to come up with is some way to push the connector out of site into some sort of a clip that would really secure it. I would then like to somehow be able to retrieve the connector without having to open up the hood all the time.
Any new thoughts on my proto-FYI project?
Thanks again!
Cheers, Edouard