Where does this terminal connect to?

I took out my battery and I found a broken ring terminal flailing about, apparently it wasn't connected to anything but something tells me that it should.

So where does it connect to? It is a short black wire so the only place it could reach seems to be the positive battery post but that doesn't sound right to me.

Thanks for the help!

It certainly doesn't look "official" (i.e. some owner added it later)

MB's way of attaching to the battery for "small" loads is via the PDC block ... and even then it's "one wire per bolt"

If you look at the battery post in this drawing, you won't see extra little wires.



--dick
p.s. looking at your photo, where does the extra big red wire go?
(the one that was apparently sharing the PDC's mounting bolt)

That certainly sounds plausible. One of the previous owners was a patient transport company that had a CB radio installed when I bought it. Perhaps that could be the other end of the CB wires that I cut inside the cab. But I still don't know where it would have connected to.

My van came to me with a box tied into the espar circuits... some sort of module mounted to the fender wall over the battery. That has an inline fuse holder like the one on the left in your second picture, and was piggy-backed under the PDC nut atop the battery terminal. Your van may have a similar aftermarket arrangement? I've moved that ring connector down to share fuse #6 on my PDC.

Do yourself a favor and totally strip out abandoned wires as you go. At best they'll confuse someone later, at worst they'll chafe on something and cause a wiring fault. I learned this a long time ago servicing yachts - far better to pull back a tracer string and hand the owner a bag of old wire than to contribute to their personal rat's nest of unlabeled, half-connected wiring.

(in August I found a couple of mystery relays and fuses, hidden up above the steering column under the dash that feed something somewhere... tapped onto a few of the wires at FB#1. I consider them sleeping dogs and have never had cause to trace them... but now that I know they exist they'll be included in future trouble-shooting should something weird happen.)

-dave

Nautamaran said:

... I consider them sleeping dogs and have never had cause to trace them... but now that I know they exist they'll be included in future trouble-shooting should something weird happen.)

Click to expand...

About 40 seconds in....

https://youtu.be/QbLPQWZWXjs?t=40

--dick

I gave a tug on the wiring harness (yes, including fuses) it was part of and voila, it pulled out of the fire wall hole. Indeed it was part of the CB radio wiring that I had cut inside previously. Guess I shoulda traced the wire instead of running to THE AWESOME FORUM for answers!!!!

Have mercy!