What is the best way to repair welding cables

[AWPMAN]

I have the braided then twisted 2/0 cable and the insulation seems to be dry rotted and cracking. I really like the quality and need to know what is the best repair. The job site will not let you use vinyl tape but you can use vulcanizing tape. Any ideas appreciated. I have other 2/0 cable but the quality is not as good.
AWPman

[Gravel]

How long is the part that is cracking?

[snoeproe]

If the cracking is constant throughout the majority of the cables, it's time to replace them with new cables.

[mad welder 4]

Use self sealing heat shrink.

[92dlxman]

Use self sealing heat shrink.

not sure if an approved method or not, but I have also used heat-shrink on leads and it works great. the only downside is that it tends to hang up on stuff if your pulling it around corners, which you shouldn't be doing anyway

[Gravel]

I used heat shrink tubing on repairs but agree with snoepro that it is timemto replace them if the damage covers a large portion.

[AWPMAN]

The cable insulation seems to be getting brittle. Has anyone found a product to soften it up. They seem to crack in the loop when I wind them up from bending. No big chunks they develop a 1/8 crack. I will try the shrink next.
AWPman

[Austin Bennett]

They make marine grade heat shrink, self sealing like mad welder suggested. You might be able to buy it in rolls of 50-100'. This could get expensive for a temporary fix though. Good luck!

[mad welder 4]

Usually the parts that crack and fall apart suffered some past accidental abuse.
On my small 3ga stinger it had fallen down in front of a hot exhaust pipe discharge and got cooked while I was using the wire wheel, it didn't appear to suffer anything beyond surface damage, but within 3 months that section of cable had split wide open. Lucky for me it was about 2 feet from the stinger so I lopped it off the damaged section and spliced with 10ft of 4ga cable and used self sealing heat shrink over the giant butt crimp connector and stuck the stinger on the end of the 4ga.
Let me see if I can go get a picture of it.

[mad welder 4]

Here is the shrink wrap on my very long 2ga stinger lead connecting the cable to a miller receptacle.
I loaned out my spliced 3ga to 4ga stinger lead, but this is the same idea.

I actually like this better than the miller provided plastic cover that covers the jack plug. The miller jack plug has a metal screw that you will likely touch when you hot stab the jack into an energized receptacle. The heat shrink gives you 100% coverage of the conductive bits.

[rvpc]

time to replace them. OSHA frowns on "band aids" on cords, cables and the like.

[GlenC]

The Raychem RNF-100 heat shrink should work...

[snoeproe]

It will never end. Time for new cables. Strip the copper out of the old cracked cables an sell it for scrap.