Just cause minis had a battery cable inside the cab doesent mean its the safest way. There are a number of cab over vans that have batterys inside the cab. VW have the battery under the back seat from memory.
Hec most cars pre 1971 in Aus didnt have seat belts, yet it is reccomended to have belts installed anyways...

Just my opinion is all.

didnt fit so i had to change cars :P but it did do 13's down the 1/4 mile :P (not a normal mini i should add hehehe

what are u doin with a mini anyways perthute? chuck a sr in it? ;)

cant get better mechanical protection ;) and at the end of the day you would have to bolt the positive side of the cable to the negative side to get a massive short, it would blow the end off the lug before it could heat up enough.. we are talking 100's of amps.

u see what it does to spanners ;)

wait a min mini's had the batt lines in the cab with the starter button on the floor ???

It all comes down to engineer.... Doesn't matter what we do it will still be wrong for the inspectors ;)

I guess thats it in the end.
Its what the engineieer wants, that what they get.

For me, its a safety issue in that you have a high amperage cable running though your cab without any protection (fues, breaker or relay). Sure its probally never gonna be an issue, but that then becomes a sticky issue about 'what if' senarios that become difficult to accuratly quantify.Analyse the risk associated with it, and you find that you need to do something about it. I could rabbit on for a while about this, but I think you and I are arguing on the same side basically Bailz.

Anyways, the original question of where to run the cable was offically answered by the engineer. Outside.

As to cable size, bigger is always better, and 19mm (dunno CSA size) diamater cable will be more than enough.

well u take the cable size, if its run inside the cab it would be recommended to use a larger cable to compensate for insulation factors such as ambient temp etc etc, cable size being Cross sectional area (CSA).. if u were to use a 10mm2 CSA cable, u wouldnt get a lot of cranks before the cable starts to get hot. if u had a 70mm2 csa cable u would be able to get alot more cranks outta it.. in the end the starter motor is the biggest draw on the battery..

i agree reuby that in theory its better to run under the cab, its free to air and can dissipate heat.. so really if u like the look of a cable running under ure car go for it ;)

or just run through the cab and use a heavier gauge cablt to compensate. hehe as jordy would say " are you trying to compensate for something???" lol

it all comes down to the engineer, Oldschool has his running inside the cab in WA... thats a ca18det conversion

Bailz, its not about the cable size that is the reason for running it outside the cab. Its purely a safety issue. If you get a short, the cable will cheese insde the cab and potentially cause a fire, and a short doesent have to be caused by a cable being too small. (sure it can contibute, but not the only answer) Since battery cables need to be directly connected to the starter motor (ie no fuse) there is no protection on the circut. Again, we could discuss the liklyhood of a short occuring in the cab for ever, but it seems thats a moot point.

An engineer has said it must be outside the cab, so thats it reguardless of reasons.

As for minimum cable sizes, well thats another conversation altogether. Cable sizes are govened by an Australia standard ( as I am sure you know bailz), and even though you are not directly leagally required to follow these, the consequences of not following them could be nasty.

If you ignore the standard, you can look at determining cable size on a sliding scale as a ratio of total amp draw vs total time that a cable of given length will experiance that draw. You can use a smaller cable to draw the same amount of amps accross it if the time is proportinally less. Just look at the cheap and nasty jumper lead sets, usually only a 10 mm diamater cable. They can handle short jumps, but begin to get very hot if you attempt to use them for anthing over that. If you then throw in enviromental factors such as ambient temp, then that changes things too.

In the end, bigger is always better for battery cables.

Stupid to run under car, 1 it looks #OOPS# and u hav to put fixings under the car, no 2, if the cable is big enough u will Neva hve a problem. I work in the power generation
industry across the whole mining sector, it would be good to have and isolator in te cab somewhere too.. I am yet to find a spot for mine