Electrics: Connections to Positive Terminal

[Bob Meadows]

If you can?
Buy the parts separately from one of the listed suppliers:~ I would also try and reuse the battery terminal but no great shakes to renew.
A gas gun & solder will do it.

Put the savings in the kids money box!!
Bob.

[ASt85]

Originally Posted by stevepcar

Just had the transmission out of my 1995 2.4 NA 10V 850, to replace rear crankshaft oil seal. Caused by delay in overhauling the PCV system. I made sure that all of the electrical connections & cables were out of the way. But upon reassembly, I found that the terminal, on the end of the bunch of red cables that are part of the main harness, that goes behind the airbox, and fixed to the top of the positive battery clamp, had snapped. Not sure how it happened, maybe clumsiness, or just metal fatigue. Car has done 168, 000 miles. Obviously in that time the clamp has been removed numerous times, so a certain amount of stress on that part. Anyway, has anybody had the same problem & how did they effect a repair? Any help much appreciated.

All you need is one of these https://www.halfords.com/motoring/ba...or-165365.html
or
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terminals-C...6644270&sr=8-5 - £4.39 delivered for a pair!

strip back the insulator and insert cable - Tighten the 2 screws/bolts on the clamp to the bare lead then re-clamp to battery - there are a right angle extended ones available from most local motor factors - THEY DO NOT NEED SOLDERING - soldering is prone to overheating/failure due to poor or dry jointing as it can be difficult to apply enough heat to a copper wire of that diameter.
NB only re-attach the clamp with the key in the ignition to positionII to avoid air bag deployment due to voltage spike!

[RollingThunder]

Those are ok for most cars, but ours have an immediate 90 change of direction so that the battery drops down the side of the battery - its finding a terminal that has this 90 degree drop that is the problem.

If you look at the pic below, you can see there is no room for the cables to run off the battery horizontally - both have to drop 90 degrees to clear 'stuff'

[ASt85]

Originally Posted by RollingThunder

Those are ok for most cars, but ours have an immediate 90 change of direction so that the battery drops down the side of the battery - its finding a terminal that has this 90 degree drop that is the problem.

If you look at the pic below, you can see there is no room for the cables to run off the battery horizontally - both have to drop 90 degrees to clear 'stuff'

True, but you can get round that problem by clamping to the existing connector which I did with my old, now sold, 850, which worked perfectly well for several years.

The problem I have with my C70 is replacing the +ve battery terminal cover every few weeks as they don't want to stay put in the Exide battery holes.

The only way I've found to stop the cover disappearing is to use a smear of silicone on the cover's lugs!

[Bob Meadows]

Why not cut the old lead just under the original clamp and drill out the remainder:~ or you could probably heat the clamp with a gas torch and pull the old lead out- clean the area & feed solder back into the joint, I’ve done similar on classic cars without problems.
Trust it helps
Bob.

[stevepcar]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. having noticed that ll of the available terminals appear to be made of copper, I came up with a solution without having to buy or solder anything. I wish I knew hoe to post pictures, but hopefully I can explain the procedure.
First of all I cut the broken terminal off the wire and strpped back the same amount of insulation as the original.Then I took a piece of standard copper tube, left over from some plumbing,about 40mm long and flattened the end in a vice to the same length as the original terminal, mabout 15mm. It came out a lot wider than the original, which is bent down around the retaining screw head. I did try to duplicate that, but the beyond the flattened tube it is still just single skin, so it kept breaking. The extra width did not cause any problems, it just looked a bit ott. Next I cut along the length of the tube, and trimmed back the two edges each side of the cut, by about 2-mm each side. I measured the length of the exposed wires and cut 2-slots in the tube, 3mm apart, down to about half its diameter. I was the able to then remove that 3mm strip from both sides of the tube. So now I have a terminal end 15mm x 15mm, then a section of tube about 8mm long with a longtitudinal slot, then a gap 3mm wide & another section about 8mm long with a longtitudinal slot. So now I was able to place the stripped wires in the first slotted part of the tube & using electrical crimpers, I was able to crimp the two sides of the slotted tube over them & the same for the insulated wires that were now held in place by the rear section of slotted tube.
Sorry for the disjointed description, but hope you get the idea. It looks a bit Frankensteinish by comparison to the original. But what it lacks in finesse it makes up for in strength. I was even able to bend the terminal down, once it was fixed to the vertical screw on the battery clamp, so that it did not foul the battery terminal cover. I have covered 20 miles so far without any weakness showing up in the connection. Hopefully it will last at least as long as the old one.

[burgess]

That happened to my C70 cabrio. First-off, I crimped eye tags of each red lead and reattached them. I then got a 22mm end-feed straight copper coupler from builders merchants.
Cut it open flat, and cut and fashioned a new one. Then zinc electroplated it using an zinc plated in white vinegar, using a zinc angle-bracket for an anode and two AA batteries for a 3 volt dc power supply, only took a few minutes.

[burgess]

Steve, to post pictures click on the ‘paper-clip' icon at the top of the reply dialog box.