How To Replace Battery Terminals

Below is a video on how to replace battery terminals.

If you could subscribe or like the video…. thanks, I hope this helped someone out there. If you know someone that it could help just press the share button and share it with them. Be sure to check back for more do it yourself fixes soon.

Today we will be showing you how to replace your battery terminals on your car or truck. To start you will need to determine what style battery you have. There is a top post battery with the connections on the top and there’s a side post battery that has the connections on the side. They do also make combination battery’s that have both.

Once you have determined what battery you have you will need to figure out what battery terminals to get. If you have a side post battery and the cable end of the car or truck is bad or corroded you will need this style clamp. If yours is just stripped you will want to just replace the stud.

For a top mount battery like we are fixing you will need the clamp that a bare wire can go into as these cable ends are molded into the clamp. If at the end of your cable there is eyelet and a wing nut or nut holding the wire to the clamp then you will need to get this style clamp.

You should look in your owner’s manual to see whether your vehicle has negative ground (most do). If it does, use a wrench to first loosen the nut and bolt on the clamp that holds the battery cable on the negative terminal. (That’s the post with the little “–” or “NEG” on it.) If your vehicle has positive ground, loosen the cable with “+” or “POS” on it first. Remove the cable from the post and lay it out of your way. Then remove the other cable from its post and lay that aside.

Now that we have the battery disconnected we can remove the electrical tape off our negative cable end. With the tape of we can take a pair of wire cutters and cut the wire as close to the cable end as possible. With the wires cut you can now take a pair of wire strippers and strip the wires. Keep in mind you just need to strip enough to fit into the clamp. With the wires stripped we can hold them together and give them a twist. With them twisted together we can slide them into our new battery terminal. This is the Negative so we are use the black colored terminal. Once the wire is in the terminal we can run down the two bolts by hand. After they are hand tight we can grab a wrench and tighten it down. Once tight it’s a good idea to pull on the wire and terminal just to make sure it’s really attached.

With the negative side done we will move over to the positive side. Only difference with this side is that it has a rubber protective boot that needs to be pushed back. Undo the electrical tape side the rubber boot back as far as you can on the wires and then repeat the same process as we used for the negative side. IF your rubber boot is damages you can slide the old boot off and install a new one.

At this point it might be a good idea to look at the sticker on your battery it will show when you bought it and how long you can expect it to survive. If the date is close it might be a good idea to replace it now while you already have it disconnected. Since we know our battery is good we can grab a battery terminal cleaner. To use it just slide it onto one of the battery terminals and twist a few times. Then do the other side. Now to do the new clamps we just installed you will need to separate the brush and make it so the male end is out and put it back together and then slide the brush into the positive terminal and twist it. Repeat for the negative side.

Now that we have our battery cleaned and our new terminals we are ready to install them. If you had a lot of corrosion on your battery or terminals you may want to put anti-corrosion washers on your battery. If you are using them get them ready and then slide them onto the posts. They do have a kit which includes the battery terminals and the rings.

Reinstall the battery cables onto the terminals in reverse order from which you removed them. If your vehicle has negative ground, the positive cable goes back first. Slide the positive terminal onto the battery. You may need to use a flat screwdriver to open the clamp so it will fit onto the battery. Next take a wrench and tighten the clamp to the battery. Once it is tightened down be sure to make sure it is secure. Repeat the process for the negative terminal.

With both new terminals on and tight we can now slide the protective rubber boot back over the positive side terminal. With that rubber boot over our positive terminal that’s it you have just installed new battery terminals on your car our truck.

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer