This 1996 Nissan Pathfinder came in with cranking problems and one of the first things that I noticed was that the positive battery cable end had been replaced and that the crimp connection seemed questionable at best.
Upon closer inspection is was just plain bad. I was able to easily pull the cable out of the terminal crimp area.
The second issue was that the square headed bolt that came with the battery terminal would not seat into the factory splice pack terminal. Not to mention the fact that the bolted connection was not able to be secure because of the springiness of the clamp.
Even though I had already cleaned the battery post when I took the next picture, you can see the pits in the metal caused by arcing.
To fix this connection permanently I used a pair of needle nosed pliers to mostly straighten out the curved tabs around the outer edges of the brass terminal. Then I used another pair of flat jawed slip joint pliers to flatten out the entire terminal.
I clipped off the extra metal tabs around the sides of the terminal and then file the edges smooth. I also had to enlarge the hole with a hand reamer. A drill could be used but it is more dangerous. If used I strongly recommend holding the terminal assembly with a pair of pliers.
I crimped and soldered a new ring terminal onto the main battery cable end. Then sealed it with some heat shrink tubing.
I used a standard nut and lock washer. The supplied brass wing nut could not be used due to how close the reed plastic material is to the stud.
One last thing I used what is called a universal marine style terminal. There are three types of marine terminals, positive, negative and universal. The positive terminal will have a 3/8 inch stud where the negative and the universal have a 5/16 stud. The negative terminal cannot be formed to fit the positive post without a lot of work and specialized tools. The universal terminal has the 5/16 stud that I needed for this repair and it can be formed to the positive terminal without too much trouble. In case you did not know it the positive battery post on a top post battery is larger in diameter than the negative post.