How to Remove Car Battery Terminals

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Aaron Gregory on behalf of Expert Village. I'm going to talk about what happens when your car battery dies, how to select a new battery, and how to see what the problem is. We'll begin by removing the negative terminal from the battery and getting it out of the way so that it does not stay touching and contacted. And, then we'll remove the positive terminal of the battery. Oh wow, that one was too loose. This terminal might stay connected to the battery if you don't bend it out of the way a little in which case we might still have the sparking problem. So, as you can see it's thoroughly out of the way. And, we'll move on to this one, loosening, and sometimes this terminal will be stuck really tight. Now, they make a tool called the battery terminal puller that has a threaded rod and a little plunger and you screw it down and it lifts the thing up. Without having this special tool, there's a slot here. And if you open the threaded rod, and use a tool to spread these, these ears that get pinched together, and then you lift the front of the terminal gently. You can usually get it off. When you're removing terminals, both sides look like a bolt. But, you want to turn the nut side and loosen the nut side. Because the square bolt head is not supposed to rotate. It stays stationary. Loosen it a little more than you think you need to, but don't take the nut all the way off. That way, you have some clearance to spread the lead open to get the terminal off the battery. Try to twist it. If it won't twist, you might need to open this gap here slightly with your wrench or a screwdriver. Open the ring and make it larger. And then, twist it. Wiggle it. If necessary, pry a little. If you're going to pry the terminal up, lift evenly so that you don't break the lead terminal off of the battery. Now that the terminals are off the battery, we're looking for any signs of white powdery corrosion or brown rust. And the same goes for the inside loop of the car end of the terminal, the female side. Tools are available that have a wire brush that sticks in and you rotate to clean the female side. And then, there's also a mating female brush that goes over the terminal that you can twist. Sometimes that's not enough. I like to use a wire brush and scrub the terminals until I see shiny, clean lead. "