Battery cables for trunk mounted batteries

[Marcus Alley <alley@domain.elided>]

Howdy,

This weekend I finally got around to replacing the fuel line in my
(71) GTV.  I ended up going with braided hose and replacing the tired
rubber stand-offs with some neoprene supports.  The battery in this
car is in the trunk, and as such, the cable to the starter solenoid
follows the fuel/vapor return lines on the underside of the car.  I
have two questions regarding this particular arrangement:

1) Coming out of the trunk, the battery cable and vapor return line
   attach to a point on the floor pan behind the T-arm.  Both lines
   are then routed over the T-arm to the next attachment point on the
   floor pan in front of the rear axle.  There's not a great deal of
   clearance between the battery cable and the T-arm (maybe 1/8"), and
   I'm a little woried that any rotation of the T-arm could end up
   wearing away the cable jacket.  The other possibility would be to
   pass the cable between the floor pan and the T-arm, but there
   didn't seem to be any more space with this option, and I wasn't
   sure if the T-arm rotation wouldn't pinch the cable at some point. 

   Maybe the more general question is whether or not this is the right
   way to run this battery cable in the first place.  Should it even
   go under the car, or should it route through the inside somehow?

2) This leads me to a another more general question regarding the
   battery cable.  That's a fairly long distance from the trunk to the
   starter, and it would seem that any damage to the cable could
   result in a nasty short.  Does anyone ever put a fuse in series
   with this line?  So maybe this is a stupid question, and I realize
   that in order to turn the car over the battery needs to be able to
   source a significant amount of current.  And maybe, if the cable
   should be on the inside of the car anyway, this is a moot point.
   Nonetheless, it would seem like it could be helpful...

Any comments are appreciated, and as usual, thanks a lot.

Marc Alley
Palo Alto

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