This 1995 Buick Park Avenue came in with a complaint of not cranking sometimes. The customer stated that when it happens nothing works. He could wiggle wires around the battery and it would come back to life. The battery had been changed recently. The battery cables should have been checked when the battery was installed, but as you can see from the picture below it was not.
Arc marks on the battery post, along with a little melted plastic.
The bolt side was no better. Heavy arcing.
With the bolt removed, I pulled the rubber boot off of the battery cable terminal.
Now, you can really see how bad the corrosion was.
I used my battery brush attachment on a cordless driver to clean the terminal.
These brushes work really well as you can tell in the next two pictures. To order one of these battery brushes please click here.
I trimmed the distorted inner ring from the terminal boot, using a razor blade.
Put the boot back over the terminal end and applied dielectric grease.
A new bolt tightened down.
I wiped off the excess grease and this one was done. To find new battery bolts please click here.
In this case it did not turn over.
when they had the problem did it turn over but with no crank?