Regular Car Maintenance – How to clean your car battery posts
Car Battery Terminal with Anti-Corrosion Disk
Ok, time to confess - how often do you look at your battery connections when you open the hood of your car? If you are like many, not very often or maybe never. However, you should. A simple regular maintenance for your car can keep your battery posts clean and help insure that your car will start every time!
You may have been that white crusty stuff around a battery post at one point or another. That corrosion may stop your efforts short from starting your car. It doesn't take much corrosion for the connection to the battery to suffer.
If you want to use corrosion removal fluids you can buy them from an auto parts store or you can make your own by mixing baking soda and water.
Cleaning the battery posts
1. Remove the battery terminals - tools required: 1-2 wrenches, flat head screwdriver - remove the negative cable first. Sometimes the terminal comes off without having to unscrew the nut and bolt all the way, with a twist it may come right off the post - if not -use a flat head screwdriver and pry the terminal open.
2. Cleaning the posts - put the fluid (store bought or your own mix) on the posts and the terminals and don't forget the inside. You will see foaming. Let the fluid stay on for a few minutes. You can use a brush to clean up build-up that is stuck.
3. Rinse with water.
4. Re-connect the terminals - connect positive side first. The positive terminal is indicated by a "+" sign and should be marked in the color Red. Then re-connect the negative terminal, which is indicated by the "-" sign and should be marked in the color Black.
Or instead of using the removal fluid you can use wire brush - medium stiffness, small size - to brush off all build-up inside and around the posts and terminals.
If you want to use anti-corrosion discs, put them on after cleaning the posts and before reconnecting the terminals. There are two discs red and a green one, put them on red to positive post and green to negative post. The anti-corrosion discs work to keep the corrosion away.
Check periodically the battery posts to see if any new build-up is present.
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