I'm pretty sure mine is 24mm², 25 is near enough.
Personally I would still go for earth clamps, they have real solid copper contacts and strong springs. But watch the [+] clamp arms don't touch the body or engine, as they are not insulated. You can put hose over them or wrap in tape, if concerned.

The welding shop can make these leads up for you, a good proper crimp job is fine on the lugs and they would have the tool for this.

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

use heat shrink tubing to insulate the soldered joints and the handles of the clamps. you can get it from the same place as the cable and clamps anyway if you get from electrical supplier plus you are already using the heat gun to do the soldering ......

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the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page
66 Mini Minor sponsored by http://www.lifeonthehedge.com.au/ The Dog Harness Specialists
It was a pleasure ausmini. I'll miss all you misfits and reprobates

Biggest fattest and longest ones you can get, make sure the clamps are soldered on not just crimped

I have had no dramas at all so far with my 400A set. They have a little "surge protector" thingo on them. I've jumped my minis off my Subaru plenty of times and jumped my Subaru off my mates Commodore once. I've even started one mini without a battery fitted in it. Remember you can always push/bump start for free.

Does it matter which ones you paint red and which ones you paint black What will happen if you just do it randomly?

Haha, personal firewores

Like the common theme, the fatter the better with good strong clamps.
A crimp is ok if the clamp / outer bit crimped to the cable is fat as well, thin metal won't have the strength to hold a good commection.
In my blue mini i relpaced the standard battery cable with red 4guage amp cable, cranks over great, so anything that big or bigger will work well.
You could use thin wires like 12guage for jump cables, only you will need to leave the cars hooked together for 30 min to charge the flat battery first

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Dean Hutton's first car was a Mini.

There's actually no need to solder a crimp lug onto the cable unless you have not got access to a proper crimping tool. They're designed by clever engineers to carry the full load continuously and do this really well. It can cause the cable to fray earlier as the copper strands climb over each other (as some strands are soldered, some not), a properly crimped lug has a slightly bell shaped end as well to reduce fray damage.

The trick to a quality termination is to make sure the stripped copper is pushed all the way up the lug as far as it will go so it contacts the end. Anything less means you need to strip back a little extra insulation until it does. Also it is poor form to leave any of the strands out because they jammed up on the way in. Pay attention to getting all the strands in, crimp it with the right tool (or solder if need be). There's a little trick of the trade to getting all the strands in efficiently, wrap the exposed copper with electrical tape to keep them together and then slide the lug over the top of the taped copper a little. Remove the tape and push the lug home.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

That is quite true for crimp lugs, however on most manufacture jumper leads, they do not use a lug, only the sheet steel - of a thin gauge - to crimp the lug in to. In use they get hot and then a thermal - down hill - cycle begins where the heat firstly expands the metal, then it get hotter, expands even more and usually by this stage starts to soften and so any clamping that was offered by the 'crimp' in the first instance is gone and so all the energy ends up heating the connection instead of turning the starter motor....

Proper 'crimp' lugs (or their proper name is compression fitting) or if you can find them a 'bolted' fitting used on cheap lead sets, then bolted together will usually work quite well.

This is a 'bolted'fitting;-

http://webshop.cabac.com.au/webshop/pub ... info/CABL3

These are actually better than compression fittings and don't require special tooling, however they are considerably more expensive than compression fittings.

I've often wondered about making up a set of leads with Anderson plugs (the 175 amp version) rather than clamps. I always seem to be stuffing around charging one of the fleet or using the 12v compressor when I'm at a hillclimb and it would be easier if the tow car had a plug wired to the battery and mounted down at bumper height or thereabouts that I could use without having to pop the bonnet and fiddle with clamps.

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66 Deluxe, 07 Cooper

I love having good cables. Just the other day my kid neighbour was trying to jump start his AE86 Corolla after the stereo drained the battery from his buddies car. He couldn't get it to turn over, he was pretty stressed that something serious was wrong, I saw the cables he was using and knew what the problem was right away. I said I've got some magic cables and handed him my heavy duty cables. He tried them, the car fired up easily. He's been bugging trying to find out what was so special about my cables. He doesn't believe me that they are magic.

Same kid was also impressed by my gear wrench, he couldn't figure out how it automatically knew which way to ratchet when I wanted to tighten or loosen a bolt. Eventually I admitted that the wrench was not magic and I was just flipping it over. LOL

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67 Traveller - Needs restoration
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BTW I just love how Supercheap sizes their hookup cable by the outside diameter of the plastic..

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

Marketing....marketing Kev, but you already knew that.
As someone once said, put a turd on a plate and not only could marketers sell it but yer'd think it tasted like butter.

Joining the RACQ or NRMA and those sort of services is cheaper on the long run. Jump Leads waste space in the boot of your car or short out across the battery terminals when you are not using them and cause a bigger mess like I have seen many times. Keep your battery and electrics in good shape and you will not need them. These cheap Jump leads you were mentioning are not worth the plastic bag they come in. They are mostly plastic and hardly any copper to conduct and carry starting current.

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"Let us remove your "SHORTS"

Hi there guys.
You wont be needing cable the size of 70 or 90mm2 for this. Thats more than adequate but far too big. 70mm2 has a continuous rating of 220 amps continuous (75deg insulation) and 270 amps continuous (90 deg insulation) where as 95mm2 is rated at 270A (70 deg) and 330A (90 deg).
I haven't bothered to work out what the short circuit capacity for these cables are, but it will be huge!!!

I can buy 70mm2 flexible cable for about $20 per metre - TRADE - so i'm not sure what the electrical wholesalers would charge you retail! probably at least half again if you walk off the street (someone can correct me if i'm wrong).

25mm2 costs about $10 per metre less and is more than adequate to do the job, remember its not the continuous rating your after as for this cable it is only 115A (70 deg) and 140(90 deg). This cable will be able to do a massive short circuit current for the time you are cranking.

The fitters at work have 70mm2 jumper cables, but the have to jump start up to 300kW underground machines that run 2 900CCA truck batteries.

I have 38mm2 cables at home, its a weird size because its Japanese (from a factory I once worked at) and this is way bigger than I would ever need.

Pinched for another website
"Many people gauge the strength of jumper leads by the thickness of the cables. The danger here is sometimes the insulation makes up the bulk of the cable, leaving a very thin amount of cable core to carry the current from the donor to the flat battery. Have a closer look at where the cable core is secured to the jumper lead clamps. Firstly look for a good connection, and there should be a reasonable amount of core cable in relation to the total cable thickness. Poorly crimped connections can fail if the jumper leads are in regular use, as the angle of the cables when connected can cause the inner core to work loose. Diesel engines operate on a much higher internal compression ratios, so more electrical load is placed on the cables in comparison to an average-size petrol engine. The thinner-cored jumper leads can suffer from sever overheating, and in most cases the amount of current flow is insufficient to boost the flat battery."

You will probably find that these cheaper jumper leads are only 4mm2 maybe 6mm2 for higher current ones.
You will find that 16mm2 cables would jump start a car more than adequately.

No problems with crimping cables at all with the correct tool as Mick said. Soldering is also good if you can solder properly.
With clamps, either do what the Doctor has said or get decent battery clamps. These have a strap that goes from one half of the clamp to the other half. This means that you have the whole clamp making a connection and are not relying on a rivet and spring for the other half of the clamps connection.

Any way thats my 2 cents if your interested

According to AS3000's you're right...I don't know where I got my idea of only 100 from...thanks for clearing that up.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.