Christmas Tree Dash? Blame Your Battery Cables
Paul Roth of Big 7 Kits (formerly JeepCables.com) is back on the Jeep Talk Show talking rebranding, premium battery cable kits, and why better cables solve starting problems, Christmas tree dash lights, and weak grounds on XJs, TJs, JLs, JTs and beyond. From his still-running 1999 Cherokee shop truck to Stellantis white-gloving it for a special event, Paul shares how quality oxygen-free copper kits and proper grounds keep older and newer rigs running strong while expanding into Ford, Dodge, and diesel platforms.
Timestamps
Key Highlights
- Why the switch from JeepCables to Big 7 Kits and how it better serves Jeep, Ford, and Dodge owners
- The full story of Paul’s 99 Cherokee getting the white-glove Stellantis treatment and meeting design leadership
- How factory cables corrode, cause voltage issues, and why pure copper Big 7 kits outperform OEM
- Headlight relay harnesses, extra grounds, and real-world electrical troubleshooting (including radiator-as-ground failures)
- Expanding into Powerstroke, Cummins, and Duramax diesel cable kits plus why high-output alternators demand better wiring
If you liked this chat with Paul, hit like, drop a comment about your own cable or Christmas-tree-dash stories, subscribe for more Jeep Talk Show episodes, and check out big7kits.com (or jeepcables.com) while you’re listening.
Support the Show & Shop Jeep Gear Thank you for watching and listening! If you enjoyed the conversation with Paul Roth, consider checking out some of the great products and upgrades we discussed.
Big 7 Battery Cable Kits (XJ, TJ, JK, JL, JT and more) https://www.big7kits.com/
Daylight Headlight Relay Harness https://www.jeepcables.com/
Diesel Big 7 Kits (Powerstroke, Cummins, Duramax) https://www.big7kits.com/
Supporting the show through our Amazon links helps keep the interviews, trail talk, and wrenching content coming. Shop everyday gear and parts at jeeptalkshow.com/amazon.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00:08 – 00:00:47:12]
All righty-ho boys and girls, it’s time for another Jeep Talk Show interview. I’m working really hard, Paul, to actually form the words and not just slur them, because I say the same thing on every interview. And blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? So I think I did good that time. So Paul Roth has always loved cars, and that passion led him to create JeepCables.com. Don’t wince, I know the name has been changed, or added to, the name recently changed to Big 7 Kits, Big, the number 7kits.com. After he couldn’t find quality battery cables for his 1999 Jeep Cherokee, God bless you. So he built his own, oh wait, what? Oh, it’s the picture. I thought I’d gotten something wrong. Wait a minute, you’re wrong.
[00:00:49:17 – 00:01:05:17]
Word spread quickly. Actually, it’s not 99 and a half. Yeah, word spread quickly among Jeep friends, and soon he was shipping kits worldwide. Today, the company offers kits for over 50 vehicles and continues to grow. This is an old intro, so some of these numbers may have changed.
[00:01:06:23 – 00:01:25:24]
Paul believes in keeping vehicles on the road rather than replacing them. Still runs his original 99 Cherokee as the shop truck, and is currently building a 2023 Wrangler 392. I bet you’re done with that, if you’re ever done with a Jeep build. No, yeah, are you ever done? Like, no, you’re crazy.
[00:01:27:03 – 00:02:01:28]
What began as a simple fix for his own Jeep has become business, helping enthusiasts everywhere keep their rigs running strong. And as you said here in When You Fill Out the Form, following up on the last time we had a chance to talk, we’re at where we’re going, where we’re at, where we’re going, and things we’ve been up to. So if you didn’t catch it already, you should go over to, you should go over there now while you’re listening or watching this interview, big7kits.com, big, the number sevenkits.com. Paul, thanks for coming back. Thank you.
[00:02:02:29 – 00:02:07:28]
All right, so why the name change? Was Jeep serious when they sent the cease and desist?
[00:02:09:06 – 00:02:47:19]
No, it’s actually, we started talking to a lot of people in the Ford and the Dodge communities, and they were like, “Well, you don’t have anything for my vehicle, what do you mean?” Your Jeep cables, it doesn’t, you obviously won’t have anything for my Ford or my Dodge. No, we actually do have stuff for your truck. So then we really started looking at it, and people have always bought our big seven kit that we’ve sold, so the Jeep cables, big seven kit. And we were like, “Well, you know, let’s just lean into what we are, and we’re the big seven kits.” So we rebranded, that’s been really interesting. If you ever had an exercise and rebranding, it’s,
[00:02:48:21 – 00:02:58:00]
yeah, people are still like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like, the Jeep cables, no, no, no, actually we’re, you know, we’re big seven.” Yeah, it’s like, I remember jeepcables.com, those
[00:02:58:00 – 00:03:10:05]
I’d much rather deal with you. We’re the same company. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So it made it really easy. I did have an awkward conversation with Stellantis when we were,
[00:03:11:24 – 00:03:19:11]
Pierce at Jeep Jamboree put out a thing on Facebook, and he was like, “Hey, there’s gonna be a Cherokee. I need it for an event that I can’t tell you about.”
[00:03:20:14 – 00:03:30:21]
And I messaged him, I was like, “Hey, Pierce, I’ve got a 99 Cherokee. I sent them some pictures and he called me and he’s like, “Oh, I love this.” He’s like, “Do you mind if I send this to somebody at Stellantis?”
[00:03:31:23 – 00:04:44:10]
And yeah, that’s fine. So since the headrest have like the Jeep cable logo and blazin’ in the headrest, like embroidered into it. So, first up from Stellantis called, and when this foreign member from Stellantis rang, I was like, “Oh, this is it. This is where Stellantis is like.” Hook her up, buttercup, yeah. Yeah, I talked to a road-nast person at Stellantis, and they’re like, “We’d love to have your Jeep out here for the release of the Cherokee for the 2026 mile year.” So he’s like, “Anything we should know about the vehicle.” And I was like, “Well, the headrest says Jeep cables. We’re changing our name.” He’s like, “Oh yeah, great interior guys. They’ll cover it up. No big deal.” And actually they picked up the Jeep, white-gloved it the whole nine yards, sent it out to Brooklyn, got to go be there. We were the only privately owned vehicle. The other XJ’s that were there were either Peterson Auto Museum or Stellantis’ own personal collection. We were the only privately owned vehicle on display. That’s really cool. Yeah, that was really cool. And I got a photo, the media person from Jeep, Stellantis sent me a picture of Ralph Giles, the chief of design over at Stellantis, posing in front of it, like doing a thumbs up.
[00:04:46:29 – 00:05:34:18]
Well, the Stellantis people are always very friendly, but of course they have lawyers, they have to protect their brand, all that stuff. I understand. But I mean, in the big scheme of things, having companies with the word Jeep in it is really good for them in the long run. But again, they have to protect their name. And I understand that. I get it. Yeah. I get it. So yeah, but I think they like that. I think they really enjoy, I would, if I was building something that people fantasize about and have to have one and make all these modifications to. So yeah, it’s really, really cool. So I know that you have other vehicles, but were you concerned about shipping your baby off and somebody else handling it?
[00:05:35:20 – 00:05:38:24]
I don’t care who they are. I don’t care how many billion dollars they have.
[00:05:40:04 – 00:05:58:01]
I gave them like a love note list, like, “Dear Jeep, thank you for bringing this to your show. Here are a few things you should know about this Jeep.” And it was like, it eats oxygen sensors because it’s an LS swap running a Holley Terminator. Anyways, for some reason it likes to eat oxygen sensors. There were two in the back and the way back.
[00:05:59:22 – 00:06:12:22]
You know, da, da, da, da, da, da. So I went through like, the Jeep throw up all the way back and you pull the key, the key will come out in any position. Make sure you always leave it in the off position before you pull the key out. Just like stuff like that. And Jeep was,
[00:06:13:27 – 00:06:28:21]
Panske picked it up. So like I said, White Grove, like they went over with like literally White Grove and they like found every, any imperfection, loaded it up. And then same crew brought it back, White Grove did it off the trailer, made sure it looked like, just like how they had brought it.
[00:06:31:09 – 00:06:36:28]
I think that you’re like, this client says some Jeep, they love what they’re doing. They love the product.
[00:06:38:08 – 00:07:02:13]
I actually got to meet a person from the Jeep team at Easter Jeep last year. Did you know that every Jeep has like a trapezoidal wheel well? Like they’ve carried that over, that design element over from vehicle to vehicle to vehicle. And she’s like, “Yeah, these all have like, every time I see the Jeep and I see the trapezoidal wheel well, it’s a design element we carry from every vehicle.” And I looked around the parking lot and I was like,
[00:07:03:23 – 00:07:36:09]
like guys really do carry this. So yeah, they love it. They’re really proud of it. And they really believe in the brand. And I think the reinvigoration of Jeep with some of the vehicles coming out like the Scrambler or the, apparently there’s gonna be like an SRT, and I’m like, well, I don’t know what a Grand Wagoneer looks like, but with the SRT package, maybe it’s a Hellcat Wagoneer, like who wants to see a Sacramento blasting by them at, you know,
[00:07:38:11 – 00:08:10:14]
10 seconds. Well, if you do it right, if you do it right, they don’t see you. You just go really, really fast. So yeah, Josh and I did an interview on this. I’m not an interview. We did a show on this just yesterday that’s out currently now. And we were talking about the Scrambler. It was a viewer requested thing and we were talking about it. We were bashing it. Cause it’s fun that they’re coming out with the Scrambler, but some of the stuff they’re doing with it, I don’t care for.
[00:08:11:21 – 00:08:15:23]
But one of them is an SRT version.
[00:08:17:01 – 00:08:27:00]
Josh didn’t believe me. He says, you can’t cram a Hemi in a little two door Jeep. Apparently you can. And it’s that kind of attitude
[00:08:28:18 – 00:09:33:14]
that shows why you can’t do it and Jeep can. So yeah, we’ll see what happens. But yeah, talking about the SRT Scrambler, 6.4 liter Hemi, 479 horsepower, 479 foot torque. And it’s called the midlife crisis death vehicle. (Laughing) Don’t think that I’m not figuring out how much I need to get rid of in a vehicle fleet to like make a home for a Scrambler. Well, how do you feel about IFS? Because that’s what they’re talking about doing to it. We had a Bronco Raptor and it was dumb. Like really the dumbest vehicle next to our 392 that I’ve ever driven. You’re like on 37 inch tires from a factory, IFS. It’s got turbo, it’s fun. Like, I don’t know if it’s great on trails, it probably won’t be. But if you look at probably how they’re slotting it in like a Bronco Raptor fighter, that you would have IFS, a large engine.
[00:09:34:20 – 00:09:57:12]
Like kind of like how the Mojave is like the rated or what do they call that? Like, yeah, like by rated instead of trail rated. I think that it might be like, you know, you could probably get Casey Curry in a Scrambler and have him run, you know, 500 or hammers and something like that a lot easier than you can get him into a Bronco.
[00:09:59:18 – 00:10:03:20]
I think it’s good for the brand. I think it’s the diversification. Yeah, but
[00:10:03:20 – 00:10:15:02]
it, it’s a two door truck, little truck with a hammy in it. We’ll see how many of them sell. And the IFS is front and rear.
[00:10:16:03 – 00:10:37:02]
Well, it’s not IFS on the rear, but it’s the same type of setup, not a solid axle. I’m sorry, maybe a independent rear axle, I mean, no axle, but the independent rear as well. So yeah, I mean, they’re absolutely going the direction of off-road high speed racing, which I don’t give a
[00:10:37:02 – 00:11:51:04]
about. Think about this, like how many people thought that you could take a entry level Dodge Charger and put a hammy in it, and then a couple years later, supercharge it, and then a couple years later, make it more powerful in a limited production Demon. And then a couple years later, make it more powerful in a Demon 170. Like you taking a $30,000 sedan, and now it’s doing like, what, like high eights, low nines? Like, and you’re charging people $160,000, $170,000 for it, and you’re like, but the interior is still $30,000 today, and it’s just got, yeah. Well, I don’t know about you, but when I was like 16, 17 years old, I took whatever vehicle I had and made modifications to it. And I mean, I dropped a 327 in the Nova that I had. It had a straight six, and I needed more power. And oh, I love, just love going fast. I love that torque that pushes you back in the seat. So I absolutely understand it. Actually, and I’ve mentioned this before, I actually got out of fast cars because somebody was gonna die. Not me,
[00:11:52:05 – 00:12:27:24]
(Laughs) because I was invincible, but somebody else was gonna die. So I got into full-size trucks and then got into Jeeps. I still drive fast, but I’m less likely to, for that racing thing, you know how the kids come up next to you and race? And they used to do that in the, in my XJ. I got a 98 XJ red, and it’s on 33s, and it’s got the straight six, and I’ve got quite a bit of armor on it. So some reason the steering would malfunction when some Honda was trying to race me, and I’d just take that 33 and start getting closer to their Honda.
[00:12:29:19 – 00:12:52:21]
And they got the message and left. So anyway, all right. So we know why you changed the names because it’s good for advertising. Have you noticed a difference in sales since you changed it? The story is Jeep Cables is really close to Big 7’s market share. It’s been, in some cases, we’re competing with ourselves.
[00:12:54:08 – 00:13:04:14]
So it’s just whoever we wanna serve as the customer, whether they know it’s those Big 7 kids who are Jeep Cables, we’re probably gonna take Jeep Cables and spin it into like a boutique,
[00:13:06:05 – 00:13:21:05]
kinda like a boutique shop, maybe work something into a physical storefront with that. We’ll see. Right. But I mean, you still have both sites. I mean, one site probably redirects to the other. So, oh, it doesn’t? Oh, two sites. Oh, that makes making changes fun.
[00:13:23:09 – 00:14:06:02]
Yeah, it does. So, I mean, people can still go to jeepcables.com. Is it more specific to Jeeps? Would you recommend? That’s gonna be the focus we’re working on is steering people, if they’re buying Jeeps, to Jeep Cables, buying cards for Jeeps, but still maintaining all the same products, all the same, it’s just gonna be what we’re steering advertising to. Right. So, I mean, people could go to jeepcables.com if they’ve got a Jeep and they’d be perfectly fine, or they could go to big7kits.com. And still get to the Jeep stuff. 1000%. Yeah, so that’s good. It’s just really however they remember the name. And, because that’s a big deal.
[00:14:07:11 – 00:14:19:24]
I mean, gosh, I mean, I got a big Jeep talk show logo on the side of my gladiator. I’ve had people come up and say, “Are you on the radio?” “No, it’s a podcast.” “What do you talk about?”
[00:14:22:24 – 00:14:47:22]
It’s not a stupid question. They just, I mean, I think everybody’s a little nervous, you know? And they’re not having the time to think about it. And that’s fine. Customers, you wanna make sure the customer has the easiest time finding you. 1000% Yeah, so, but it’s still funny. And I’m such a smart
[00:14:47:22 – 00:14:54:06]
I kinda look at the logo and I go, I kinda look at it, I go look at them, they go, “Oh, Jeeps?” I said, “Yes.” I know.
[00:14:56:06 – 00:15:05:21]
Yep. But yeah, it’s fine. Oh, I’m sorry, before I forget about this, we were talking about how Jeep and how good a people they are. So in 2023, I went to EJS
[00:15:06:28 – 00:15:22:17]
and I backed into one of those little tree shrubs, you know, the ones that are really short. They look like they’re from Mars or something. And I took out the factory rear light. I mean, it really just destroyed the
[00:15:22:17 – 00:16:07:07]
thing. And the last day of EJS, and I wasn’t out there, it was actually a buddy of mine that, cause we had about 25, 30 people from Jeep Talk Show that were out there all together. And anyway, he was out in the parking lot and he saw a couple of guys looking at my Gladiator and looking at that broken tail light. And he walked over there and said, “Hey, can I help you guys out?” And they said, “Oh, we were just looking “at this tail light. “We were going to get one out of our stuff, “but we’ve already packed up.” Come to find out there was two Jeep guys staying at the same hotel we were staying at. And they were gonna hook me up with a replacement tail light.
[00:16:08:13 – 00:16:39:29]
But couldn’t because of the timing of it. But I mean, they literally were over there looking at the tail light, the broken tail light, and they were gonna try to fix it. I don’t know if they were literally gonna swap it out. That would have been cool too. But yeah, anyway, I thought that was really, really nice. And it was great. And I think I asked Chip, did they look at the logo? Did they notice the logo? (Laughing) That wholesale thing again. All right, so anyway, tell the folks,
[00:16:41:04 – 00:17:37:24]
we’ve had you on the show before, but there’s always new people learning about the products that you have. Tell the folks what it is that you do. I mean, it’s Jeep cables or big seven kits. It’s really all about the cables that we use to connect our battery to the starter, the alternator, the whole nine yards. Because, and I didn’t know this. I remember the last time we talked, I didn’t realize that even in the brand new Jeeps, the XJs, I understand. You know, they got these thin little wires and your headlights are dim, and there’s a bunch of reasons for that. One of the reasons is that the cables that they use, because they’re saving 59 cents a vehicle by putting in the smaller cables. But they even do that to the JLs and the JTs, the GLUs. So the thing that confuses me is I have a 250 amp alternator because I got the max tow package.
[00:17:39:17 – 00:18:10:25]
I’m hoping they put bigger cables on there, or some engineer checked off, like it won’t melt for five years. Yeah, go ahead. So, but I found that out. I didn’t realize that. I figured I have a brand new vehicle at 2021 at the time. And I figured they did something about the cables. No, no. No, I don’t know. I can, we see it all the time where we’re cutting open a cable from a vehicle that will like have starting issues and will like PR.
[00:18:11:28 – 00:18:41:22]
A lot of JKs and JLs becomes like signal issues or Christmas tree lights on the dash. Especially the JK owners, they go through that so much where it’s like, oh, my dash lit up like a Christmas tree. Because the system is so sensitive that there’s any like ground issues or transient voltage. It just doesn’t know how to deal with it. So it just starts throwing errors. And then people will go and they’ll find their grounds are hurting or they’re worn or damaged something.
[00:18:43:01 – 00:18:50:20]
And Jeep really, I mean, and I say this with all the love, just they only have to, it only has to last three years, 36,000 miles.
[00:18:51:28 – 00:19:03:05]
And other than that, it’s fine. They’ll just send you it, they’ll send you to the dealer and have you buy a new set of cables. And that’ll be like $900 or $1,000 and the technician will want like $1,000 to install it.
[00:19:04:16 – 00:20:29:23]
It’s part of the transmission harness. I don’t know why somebody can explain that to me someday. Why the starter cable is part of the transmission harness. Whatever, he’ll do it. But yeah, the immense problems that they’ll still have because they’re not sealing the ends the same way we would. It’s different materials to meet different price points, different quality of wire. I mean, they’re not skimping on necessarily on the quality, but maybe on the protections they’re affording that wire or how they’re doing it, protecting it from elements. But we have the forethought to really build that in. And since the customer is buying something that’s gonna last since quality, they’re paying for a specifically, a niche market product that they’re buying something that we’ve paid that attention to. Whereas Jeep can’t because of either cost or for whatever reason, that’s just not in their budget or their plans. So. So I would imagine you get a lot of people that really need the cables. They’ve waited too long and they really need the cables. Is there a sweet spot where, depending on where you live, number of miles, or is it because preventive maintenance is always nice, but you don’t always wanna do it. You won’t always wanna wait till the last minute or the minute after the last minute. What we find is typically people
[00:20:32:06 – 00:20:42:22]
that are experiencing issues are usually over 150,000 miles the further north, the further west you get where the colder climates are.
[00:20:44:14 – 00:21:13:15]
Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, definitely more of a demand on the electrical system in the winter. If you’re talking a TJ that sat in a Phoenix garage and has such little mileage on it, it’s probably gonna be fine. But even then, nobody escapes time. Things where they get exposed, the battery terminal starts to get corroded because maybe the battery starts to break down and leak.
[00:21:15:00 – 00:21:49:12]
So I would think that heat cycles do something to the cables or the insulation? Depends, yeah. So they’re not sealed. So there’s really just a ton of space for, if you look at the end of it, between the lug and the jacket, there’s gaps. It’s just, you can’t help it. So any kind of water getting in there just has all the room for growth at once. And then once it starts corroding, it just keeps going. They come to a creepy green depth. Would a salty environment cause faster? Yeah.
[00:21:50:17 – 00:22:10:25]
I’ve seen electrical systems go completely sideways because the radiator was corroding. The corroding system was having issues because the radiator was corroding because now that’s functioning as the electrode because electricity is passing through the radiator because it’s just, I had to help a customer out. This was a couple of years ago now.
[00:22:12:11 – 00:23:03:00]
He kept replacing radiators because they kept leaking, 10 whole leaks. Turns out the electrical system was allowing, because it was in such a salty environment, it was allowing the radiator to act like a grounding point. So current was passing through the radiator. But really that kind of like a ground cable, like a really short cable for his radiator to the frame. So that way it was, yeah. How did you figure that one out? It took a couple iterations, but he was like, yeah, keep going through. He’s like, maybe, so, you know, when I was like, well, let’s do a ground cable for your radiator. And maybe that’s, you know. And you really can’t have too many grounds, right? I mean, I mean, you can go overboard with it obviously. You can, but I mean, if you look at some of the EFI, the standalone EFI’s though require you to go from the battery to the computer, from the, you know, from both the positive and negative.
[00:23:04:05 – 00:24:36:18]
Yeah, ground is, ground very important. I mean, that’s where all the signal are, you know, a signal is not good if the ground isn’t good. So the computer is looking for, you know, 3.3 volts at the TPS sensor and the grounds are having issues that only sees like one and a half. It’s gonna throw us a, you know, check engine light for a bad, you know, bad TPS sensor or something. All kinds of things. So I guess unless you have a CJ, everybody has a computer these days and the computer is really, really picky about voltages because it has to have a good base voltage. So it knows what’s a one and a zero type thing. Yeah, so that’s one of the reasons why the grounds are so important. And probably one of the reasons why that Christmas tree thing happens because it’s seeing voltages and it thinks the universe has gone crazy. We are in a different part of the universe. Things don’t work this way wherever I am. So, all right, so, and so I know that you guys sell the basic cables. And when I say basic cables, if you’re an XJ owner or probably a TJ owner, you know there’s a, what is it, like three main cables that you wanna change the, or maybe, well, I say three, not including the grounds, but the one at the battery. The battery goes to the starter and goes to the alternator. I guess maybe there’s like a little Y there. It’s been a while since I looked at it. Yeah, they go to the PDC where your cabin lights and your cabin, your windows and all that, yeah. So, you sell a kit to replace that.
[00:24:38:03 – 00:25:04:06]
And I’m sure you go further than– Yeah, we go– Would that be your basic kit? Our basic kit is seven wires. For an XJ TJ, YJ, ZJ, WJ, there’s about seven wires. And it’s the cylinder head, brand one, because there’s a little EM wire on the back of the cylinder head. That gets, we replace that. Renixes usually go really haywire with bad grounds. So we’ve seen that.
[00:25:05:07 – 00:25:30:28]
The fender grounds, the battery negative to the engine block, the battery to the starter, battery to the PDC, PDC to the alternator. And we throw in a fuse in there. Since we’re replacing the fusible link that’s part of the whole system, now we add a fuse in there that’s user serviceable. Because XJs, for whatever reason, maybe somebody from Stellantis can tell our Jeep would be AMC or Jeep or Renault, who knows then.
[00:25:32:00 – 00:25:55:24]
Why did you mount the alternator on a point below the waterline of when you’re fording? Yeah. Like, what were the last– They didn’t want the TJ. I noticed that when we got the TJ. It’s up high. And it’s up high on the Gladiator as well. So I like that. And I don’t know why they decided to mount it low on the engine. It’s like right at the oil pan level. So you’re going through a stream and yeah, bam, there goes your alternator.
[00:25:57:17 – 00:26:08:09]
So you guys haven’t gotten into the alternator business, have you? That seems like that’d be– No, that’s not our hero office. That’s for me, I, we’ve partnered with people.
[00:26:09:16 – 00:26:18:15]
I try to get to our partners JS alternators out of Greer, South Carolina. Great people, Jonathan and Kristin have a whole team down there, great people.
[00:26:20:02 – 00:26:53:20]
But that’s not my thing. You don’t wanna, I wanna do the thing I’m good at. And it allows me to have a singular focus. I can make everything around the wiring better. I’ve invested in machinery. I’ve invested in sasses. I mean, we’re not, I can tell people that we do wire and we do wire better than anybody else in the market. You can take any product that we make, any product that anybody else makes and I can tell you that we make ours, you know, a hundred times better.
[00:26:54:27 – 00:27:35:00]
And I can say that for any competitor that’s out there that we have, we’re just doing better than them. I mean, and that’s, I’m not trying to, I’m not trying to toot my own horn on this, but we’ve made investments in machinery, investments in processes, investments in, and every step of the process. And we deliver a better product, a fantastic product. And that’s why alternators, I would have to do it just the same way I would have to be in such tight control of the alternator housings, the windings, the bearings. It would end up costing $800, $900. And I know that there’s companies like Macman, DC Power, JS Alternators, Brand X.
[00:27:37:09 – 00:27:43:26]
It’s a market that there’s people that are better than me doing it. And those alternator companies would be,
[00:27:45:11 – 00:28:41:16]
yeah, they’re good at it. So electricity is not hard, but most people don’t know how things work. Like when they start hooking stuff up to, they start running 12 volts at 800 cold cranking amps to a switch under their dash, because they’re gonna turn a light on with a mechanical switch. And they don’t understand that that can become a light bulb filament really easy. (Laughing) And that’s usually when they learn about fuses and relays and all kinds of other stuff. So I can imagine that, especially because the price of your cables will probably seem high compared to going down to auto zone or something because of the quality. So how do you get people to understand simply, because they don’t wanna go through a whiteboard presentation, they just wanna get the
[00:28:41:16 – 00:28:55:12]
cables. How do you get it across to them? And like if you have a partner that does alternators, that’s the time that you have to talk about cables. Because if you put a 5,000 amp alternator in there,
[00:28:56:17 – 00:29:12:21]
that really will melt the cables. People still try, they still buy a kind of two, the standard 20 amp alternator on four gauge wires. I mean, you could. Bro, you know a second. I mean, yeah, you can learn at once. It’s, you know, have a fire boat right nearby.
[00:29:14:01 – 00:29:34:14]
So there was a company called Susquehanna Motorsports and they had a banner on their website that used to say something like, “It’s easier to apologize for the price than for forgiveness for the quality or something.” It was something like that. And I’ve always been like, yeah, I mean,
[00:29:37:11 – 00:29:45:10]
the shorts we would be buy once, buy once, buy once. But it’s really, it’s the higher price point just
[00:29:48:10 – 00:29:52:27]
accounts for everything that’s gone into that. And if you know that you’ve got a wanty,
[00:29:55:11 – 00:29:58:23]
so we came up with a quick sidebar.
[00:29:59:29 – 00:30:16:29]
There’s headlight relay harnesses on the market and everybody’s got a headlight harness. You can go to Ali Express or Ali Baba and I am in bulk or whatever for like three bucks each. I can set up an eBay storefront and sell them for 20 bucks, make 17 bucks per kit, whatever, it’s silly.
[00:30:18:17 – 00:30:23:25]
We sell one and they saw that and I won and I was like, oh, this is really, I know, one of it
[00:30:23:25 – 00:31:11:19]
because the relays are burnt out, the wire is falling apart, the wire is getting warm. And I started digging into it and the wire was rated first. They were calling it 14 gauge wire, but it was really 13 gauge jacket with 16 gauge wire. And probably aluminum wire. The relays weren’t a good quality. And I got to get as a personal challenge and I was like, okay, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do it better. So I went and I got an automated wire from a company that makes automotive wire for BMW and Mercedes. It’s a higher grade wire. We put the ends on and then we do a bit of solder to make sure that connection’s solid. The ends are ceramic connectors. The relay is a good relay.
[00:31:12:21 – 00:31:14:28]
And we sell it for like $95.
[00:31:15:29 – 00:31:38:15]
That’s a lot more than a standard $3 AliExpress one. And we sell a lot of that because people recognize that they’re only gonna have to buy one and they’re not gonna have to buy three. And the last time you want your lights going out is when you’re on the trail and being like, well, I saved $60 by buying this cheap one.
[00:31:39:25 – 00:31:58:22]
That’s how I’ve done the whole thing with our cable set is sure, I could use OEM, not an OEM, but like a stereo or an ant wire, like aluminum or copper clad aluminum. And I could do that stuff and I could sell it for a lot less, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night because I’m just turning out junk.
[00:31:59:29 – 00:32:03:11]
Well, I mean, you have to do the same work, whether you’re installing
[00:32:03:11 – 00:33:31:12]
or you’re installing something good. So why would you wanna do it two, three times if you don’t burn your Jeep down? So for the headlight kit, now when you said that, it reminded me when I had the XJ and the XJs is so sad about the brightness of the headlights. And a lot of that has to do with the harness that you used to get the power to the headlights. So that makes a big deal. So the XJ, the XJ, the TJ, very dim. And probably the YJ was as well. I just never experienced it. Do you see dimmer headlights on the modern ones as well? No, there are a lot of running LEDs, which LED is just needs five volts or five or 12 volts. It doesn’t care. It could be, it needs like one amp at 12 volts. It’s fine. You give it that, it’s super happy. The TJs, the YJs and all those other ones is they actually run the light, the wire harness runs through the headlight. And then the headlight goes back to the headlight switch. And then it goes back through. It’s making like this. More wire, the longer you can make a wire and electrical connection is better. And I’m being facetious, it’s not. Yeah, so the real harness, all it’s doing is just using, it’s just stealing the signal for the headlights, trying to come to headlights. It’s just stealing it to use it for a switching a relay. It works. It’s simple, it’s dead reliable, it works.
[00:33:32:28 – 00:33:45:04]
The only trouble we found is Canadians like their daytime running lights. So the system wants to trickle out like three volts just to give the headlight cause it uses the headlight itself as the DIL.
[00:33:46:29 – 00:33:52:14]
That’s the only one that’s got some problems with it because it’s Canadian film. Yeah, don’t
[00:33:52:14 – 00:34:23:28]
them off. They’re gonna be 51st state here soon. So they’ll be, finally be Americans. So anyway, just to go over it again, if you’re gonna get a higher current, higher wattage alternator, you seriously want to make sure you get better cables. Please, please. And that’s not just the cause, it’s gonna help you out. I mean, if you’re trying to get more current, more power to devices in your Jeep, headlights,
[00:34:25:00 – 00:34:33:01]
light bar, whatever, you’re gonna not be as happy. And I bet you’ve heard this before too from customers
[00:34:34:04 – 00:34:38:19]
cause it’s kind of like when you replace an old starter and then you go to start your vehicle and it goes,
[00:34:39:28 – 00:34:54:03]
(Laughing) Wow, that thing is really turning. That’s a good story. That’s a good, so we had a guy, this was a couple of years ago now, he’s like, hey, I’m having a problem with my kid. I saw my kid and now my Jeep’s making this really weird sound. And I was like, okay.
[00:34:55:06 – 00:35:31:10]
And I was like, go to that speaker, he’s like, every time I start it, it just sounds a lot different. I was like, okay, let’s see what it is. We’ll figure this out, figure it out together. And he puts him on speaker and he goes to start it. And I was like, all right, that’s a problem. He’s like, it’s never sounded like that before. And I was like, no, that’s how it’s supposed to sound. Like it’s supposed to be that fast. Well, and you don’t know because as the cable wears and as the corrosion builds, you get used to it not cranking this fast. So I mean, a good set of cables could, I think this is true. I’m gonna claim it that it can make your battery last longer.
[00:35:32:12 – 00:37:07:13]
It can make your starter last longer because you’re getting the proper voltage to it. Yeah, I’ll go with that. Yeah. People, what we’ve tried to tell people now is like, people will replace their battery, they’ll replace their alternator, they’ll replace their starter, they’ll replace their shocks. So they’ll replace all kinds of things. And then we’ll say like, they’re like, yeah, I’m having a hard time starting. And it’s like, did you replace your battery cables? Why would I need to do that? Right. The engineers designed that. Surely they’re going to design it in the necessary specs. No, they’re saving money. Does anybody, does Jeep use aluminum? I don’t think they use aluminum in their cables, do they? They don’t use aluminum. They use a different gauge of wire like SXR or SGT. They use different kinds of wire, blower strand count, higher, different jacket types. They’re just doing it because they’ve got a million feet of it in the warehouse somewhere. And they don’t even store it. Jeep doesn’t store it. Atlantis doesn’t store it. Somebody else is making that sub-assembly. There’s a warehouse somewhere that’s got millions of feet of wire. And they’re like, they committed a Jeep. It’s going to cost us a dollar a million to build this part. We’ve got a contract from Jeep to sell it for $14. They’ll charge the customer $98 to replace, everybody’s just trying to save their pennies on it. And it’s, they’re meeting the standard that slant is set. And if the slant has not, why would you exceed the standard if they weren’t getting paid to exceed the standard?
[00:37:08:19 – 00:37:24:01]
Yeah, everything’s a profit deal. All right, so, oh, and I should have made this point. And I’m hoping this is true. You don’t use any of that fly-by-night aluminum wiring or anything like this. This is all good copper stuff.
[00:37:25:08 – 00:37:27:19]
Made in the USA, oxygen-free copper,
[00:37:28:23 – 00:37:40:06]
which I actually thought oxygen-free was a marketing ploy, like oxygen-free. And actually talking to people in the wire industry at a conference, there’s a wire industry conference you would have imagined. Of course.
[00:37:41:13 – 00:38:29:07]
And they’re like, it’s actually how it’s manufactured. The wire is drawn in a vac. It’s formed in a vacuum. Wow. And it’s, yeah, it’s oxygen-free because when they’re forming those strands, there is no oxygen present. So it helps. There’s varying grades of oxygen-free, but it’s oxygen-free. Yeah, I don’t. That’s interesting. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised because you have a shielding gas whenever you’re like, MIG welding. Yeah, so obviously it could be something. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but yeah, really cool. Now, so we talked about the basic cable kit, the stuff that really, I think you benefits the most from. I didn’t know that you had headlight harnesses.
[00:38:30:14 – 00:39:10:22]
I’m trying to remember. I think it was LMC that used to sell the Chevy headlight harnesses that would work on the XJs. Wow, that’s been a few years. Yeah. That’s been a few years. It was like 40 bucks. And it was 10, 15 years ago. And I actually bought one for the XJ, of course. And then when we got the TJ, I got one for the TJ. It worked fine. Had all the right connectors and stuff on it. Just hook it up and the lights were brighter. Eventually I went LEDs on both vehicles. It’s so funny, the XJ, I don’t know, I think we talked about this before. The XJ, I found some illegal headlights on eBay
[00:39:12:04 – 00:39:15:15]
to go on the XJ, put them in, because I wanted to be able to see,
[00:39:15:15 – 00:39:15:26]
it.
[00:39:18:06 – 00:39:36:17]
(Laughing) I was sterilizing people that were in front of me. I couldn’t, you know how when something’s overexposed in the camera, it was hard for me to see the vehicle that I was behind, because it was overexposed. So I had to figure out a way, somebody was gonna get
[00:39:36:17 – 00:39:57:13]
off, or I was gonna get pulled over. I had to figure out a way to make those LEDs dimmer. I wasn’t going back to the halogens, but I had to figure out a way to make them dimmer. And I started doing some Googling, and I found out that I could actually use a DC motor speed control.
[00:39:58:25 – 00:40:12:12]
Like a PWM controller? Phase, yeah, exactly, that’s the thing. I was trying to remember, but for like seven bucks off of eBay, I got this little controller and put the knob on my dash,
[00:40:13:14 – 00:40:47:17]
and I could turn the volume up or turn the volume down Volume down. On those LED lights. And the cool thing, and I’m giving people bad ideas, the cool thing was when people were on their phone in the fast lane going to and from work at night, instead of just blinding them, I would just, it’s like putting a frog in hot water and gradually raising the heat. I would do that with the headlights. (Laughing) I would just turn it up a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And by the time I got to full brightness, they got the
[00:40:47:17 – 00:40:48:12]
out of the way.
[00:40:52:03 – 00:40:52:05]
(Laughing)
[00:40:54:11 – 00:41:14:07]
Good idea, I like that. Yeah, it was really, really cool. So anyway, that was a lot of fun, but the LED lights, they were just so, so bright. I still got them, still use them, still got the little thing on there. I mean, I haven’t driven the XJ in a long time since I got the Gladiator, but it’s all still there. That’s a good conversation, that’s a good conversation.
[00:41:15:15 – 00:41:24:20]
I’m talking with this, this Paul talking, Paul’s playing with an idea, thinking about getting rid of the XJ and getting a Gladiator.
[00:41:26:02 – 00:41:28:07]
Why? You don’t have a place to park it?
[00:41:29:24 – 00:42:02:11]
So I love our XJ, I love it, it’s amazing. It’s a fantastic vehicle. You are not ever gonna make it again. Never gonna make it again. And you have the best year, the 99, the 98 was pretty good, but 99. It was all sloped, so we don’t even have like the toopy head deal, so we have like no worries about the head because it’s an LS. Oh, that’s right, I forgot you changed. For me, the thought is like, I’ve got this really cool XJ and I never take it out of the garage and it never leaves any events. I know Brian and Darrell at JCR probably take real Hawk out more.
[00:42:03:29 – 00:42:13:23]
I just, I’m like, you know, it’d be really cool to have like a Gladiator. Maybe a Mojave, maybe the far out, like the diesel.
[00:42:15:16 – 00:42:20:22]
Yeah, we love the Gladiator. We have the 2021 Gladiator.
[00:42:22:08 – 00:42:50:26]
It’s very nice and it reminds me a lot of the XJ, which I was concerned about. The only thing that I don’t like about it is I’ve lost the 4.0 sound. That motor has a very definite sound. You know what I’m talking about because you get an LS in there now. So you can– Well, actually our daughter, we had two, I’m looking at our parking lot and then we have a TJ out in our parking lot and we have the, my daughter has an XJ, a four liter XJ of her own.
[00:42:52:23 – 00:43:22:15]
That was a project. Don’t buy a cheap Jeep. Do not buy a cheap Jeep and expect that you’re gonna be able to like, I should have just bought a nice one. She wanted a next day and I was like, oh, let’s find one I found with a blown motor. And I was like, nothing cheaper than, there’s nothing more expensive than a cheap Jeep. Oh no, and the thing about it is, even if you can afford it, it takes a lot of time. And if you have somebody else do it for you, they’re probably not gonna do it right. And they probably don’t know a
[00:43:22:15 – 00:43:44:28]
thing about Cherokees. So I love my Cherokee, it’s great. I need to break it out and get it out there again. And the thing about, the thing that scares me is the Gladiator and the JLs and stuff have the, for most of them have the three six in it. It’s not a 4.0, I don’t trust it like I do the 4.0. If anything happens to the Gladiator,
[00:43:45:29 – 00:43:56:20]
engine, cams or all those little issues that it has, there’s the XJ. All I have to do is get back in it and start it up and start driving. Fire it up. Yeah.
[00:43:58:01 – 00:44:03:28]
I’ve seen, like I’ve seen Brad at Trail Recon, he’s gone through a couple sets of cams.
[00:44:04:29 – 00:44:05:20]
Scary as
[00:44:07:11 – 00:44:12:09]
I don’t know what that cause is. I don’t know whether it’s inadequate heat treating,
[00:44:13:14 – 00:46:06:29]
or poor metal. The metallurgy isn’t, it’s not a good standard. So maybe they were skimping out some metallurgy, maybe the heat treating wasn’t done right. Maybe, I don’t know, like that’s a good question. If you can– Do you, well I have, I think I have an answer for you. Have you heard of Baxter Performance? Yes, Kevin, Lucy and Rick, they’re great people. Yeah, so Kevin says that that happens because you don’t have any oil at the top of the engine, where the cam is or the cams are. And– I’m trying to find out, I have a Baxter filter assembly poking around here somewhere that for my wife’s bail. I only have 30,000 miles on my Gladiator, but I don’t think it’s worth risking it. So I got the Baxter Performance oil filter adapter, so it keeps the oil up, at least an oil, the filter size thing, it’s a bigger filter as well, at the top of the engine, and then when I go to start it, it drops that oil down the top of the engine, so now it’s not the lifters and the cam and all that stuff aren’t dry. And I think that’s what’s happened to Brad. I actually, whenever he had that issue the first time on the Gladiator, I sent him an email, because I thought, hey, I need to get Kevin from Baxter Performance and Brad on to do an interview to talk about it, because it would be a great way for Brad to say, well, this is what happened, Brad, or did you use the Baxter Performance, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I hadn’t heard back from him. But I’d still like to know, especially with two failures now. I actually looked it up, I used AI, because I was like, I have a Gladiator, so I’m worried about mine going through the same type thing, and AI said that whenever the dealership fixes the issue, they don’t replace all the lifters.
[00:46:08:15 – 00:46:11:01]
They replace one cam, the one that’s failing.
[00:46:12:12 – 00:46:39:03]
So the next one fails. Yeah, and again, I haven’t heard anything from Brad, I didn’t try reaching out to him again, but I’d be interested in knowing if, because I know he got the cam from a shop, that had one in stock, because it was going to be three to six months to get one for the dealership. And so I’m curious about, was the whole thing repaired? Because that’s just scary. I mean, I’m impressed with the 3.6,
[00:46:40:07 – 00:46:43:25]
but I know it’s not a 4.0, and that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to buy a new Jeep.
[00:46:45:19 – 00:47:02:06]
4.0 was not invulnerable though. I had a, I rebuilt a 4.0 window for seven, and the first trip around the block, I bent the lifter, because the comp cam that we replaced the lifters with the comp cams ones,
[00:47:03:16 – 00:47:11:20]
stuck, it didn’t pump right. So it ended up, I ended up with a bent rod and…
[00:47:12:22 – 00:47:35:03]
So I was getting ready to go down a trail on the rev stuff. You know, when you rebuild a 4.0, you have to do the break in thing, which you rev it in a certain thing for two minutes and so on and so forth. But we need to talk about the stuff that you’re selling, not all this Cherokee stuff. There’s a group of people out there that love hearing about the Cherokee stuff, but we’re not going to do that,
[00:47:35:03 – 00:48:16:13]
it. I’m not going to indulge myself. All right, so getting back to the line of questioning about the cables. So you have the basic kit, you have… And apparently the kit comes with additional grounds, which you need. Do you have, and you have the headlight harness, which I think that’s very important for the older Jeeps. And what else do you have? What else do you need to do? I think now we’re really doing, we’re starting to move a lot more into the diesel, like a power stroke and come inside. Power stroke Cummins and Duramax or Dirty Max, as the kids say, side of things. But we’re really, really pushing on our, on expanding our diesel reach.
[00:48:18:06 – 00:48:58:02]
So this isn’t just Jeep that has four cables. No, okay, no. Yeah, no, I figured that was the case, but I can imagine somebody going, well, I’m glad I got a Ford. No, I mean, all those manufacturers are going to do cheap as they can. It’s a spreadsheet balance type thing. There’s no incentive to put an extra dollar to that part if they don’t have to. Like I said, they’re just, the designer at Atlantis or Ford or whoever says, this is the standard we’re going to have for this cable assembly. It needs to have this jacket material and needs to have this type of whatever, whatever their specter is for that wire, whatever they, and then here’s our budget for that part. Right.
[00:49:00:03 – 00:49:19:26]
So probably not, but I’m gonna ask anyway, because I thought it was really cool. I do not like the Tesla Cybertruck the way it looks, but I thought it was cool that they started using a 48 volt system so that they could make the cables smaller and lighter.
[00:49:21:00 – 00:49:26:17]
Do you do anything with Tesla? Cause I could very well imagine that.
[00:49:28:17 – 00:50:06:14]
Funny story, so we were talking to fine people when our connections out in Ohio and they were like, I was like, yeah, I’m thinking about getting into doing EV wiring and he was like, don’t, there’s no money in it. There’s no, he’s like, I’ll sell you all the tooling you need to make your own high voltage cables. And you can start producing that. He’s like, there’s just no money in it. It’s just, it doesn’t seem to have the problems that the 12 volt systems do. And Tesla being Tesla, it’s over-engineered and it’ll probably never fail. Good God, you’re saying that there’s a car manufacturer that doesn’t nickel and dime it.
[00:50:07:22 – 00:50:28:01]
Yeah, when you’re making a vehicle like that, it’s over-engineered, it’s gonna be over-engineered. It’s everything about those probably aside from the battery is over-engineered. And the battery just because it’s a battery, it charges it to drive, it charges it, it charges and transit and cycles and lower.
[00:50:29:04 – 00:50:48:21]
They remind me of Intermac printers. If you’ve ever dealt with printers like Intermac barcode printers, they’re built like tanks. They’re built with like plate steel for the side panels. The boards are like 10 layers thick. You’re like, what are we building here? Like this is not going to the moon. It’s just a barcode printer.
[00:50:50:08 – 00:51:17:25]
All right, Paul, you know how the kids love the social media. Where can people find either the Jeep cables or big seven kits? Longline it on Instagram, Facebook at big seven kits, Jeep cables, we actually ask you to follow us at big seven kits. We are on Instagram and Facebook at Jeep cables. You can follow us on both those platforms and I think we’re on big brown.
[00:51:19:03 – 00:51:19:26]
What’s the other one?
[00:51:21:11 – 00:51:54:08]
TikTok, I think we’re on TikTok. I’m not sure though. We’re on YouTube, but I don’t have anything. Well, if you go to the website, you probably have icons. We have social links, yep. We have social links. That you can go to. So just go to big seven kits.com and then you can find all the social media stuff. Paul, thank you so much for being with us today and continued good luck. And don’t get rid of the XJ. You’ll be so sad if the XJ is gone, but I know what you mean. You know, you’d like to see somebody enjoying it, but they’re not going to love it the way you do. I know they won’t.
[00:52:00:00 – 00:52:01:27]
You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.
[00:52:01:27 – 00:52:48:24]
XJTalk.com LLC and the Jeep Talk Show podcast is attended for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts, guests and contributors are their own and do not represent professional advice, endorsements or recommendations. We strongly advise consulting a licensed or certified mechanic or automotive professional for any repairs, modifications or maintenance to your vehicle. By listening to or using any information provided on this show, you assume full responsibility for your actions and any resulting consequences, including potential risks to safety, property or legal compliance. The Jeep Talk Show and its affiliates disclaim all liability for any damages or losses arising from the application of this content.
