Volvo: damaged battery cable?, airport parking lot, 1995 volvo 960

Question

Hi!

I have a 1995 Volvo 960.  Recently, I left the car unattended for a few days in an airport parking lot.  When I returned, it wouldnt start.  There was power, as in the radio and even the headlights would work, but the ignition wouldnt turn over, in fact it wouldnt even fire.

A friend suggested I should replace the battery, so I removed it, had it tested, and it had a full charge.  I ended up cleaning the battery thouroughly, reconnecting it, and it worked perfectly at first, I was able to drive it home.

A few days later, however, it failed to start again.  I got out, opened the hood, pushed the cables down to make sure they were well connected, and tried again.  It worked.

On the way back from the store, it failed again however, while I was driving!  Complete power failure, no power steering, no lights, no gas, ignition shutdown, had to recode the radio.  It restarted when I tried it again.  This happened to me again while I was getting on the interstate, very scary!

I can recreate the problem by wiggling the battery cable, so when I wiggle it, all power shutsoff including the ingnition.  This leads me to believe it needs to be replaced.

My questions is:

-Is this very difficult?  

-If not, how do I go about it?  It looks like it connects in a number of places underneath the engine, and I cant even tell where to begin unplugging it.

-What part name should I look for if I go to order the part online?

Thanks so much for you help, I would really like to save some money by doing the work myself, I live in a small town where people are not very familiar with volvos.

Take care,
Jessica

Answer
Jessica,
The positive cable goes between the battery and the starter. It has spots along the way that it is clamped and otherwise fastned to keep it out of harms way. If the cable end that clamps to the battery are dirty and corroded, providing there is enought cable, you can buy from the parts store a "battery cable replacement end", that you can put on to make that connection good again. So see if the cable can be pulled a little and get a new end on it and see if that works.