The GM battery termals are a sketchy design, with the angled nut that tightened the terminal, and are prone to not tightening or breaking. I hadn't had any problems with mine until last summer when the negative terminal would not tighten, and while I was able to adjust it and get it to tighten, I started looking at how to replace the terminal. There is a thread on another forum where the terminals were cut and drilled to attached marine style battery terminals, so opted to go with this route.
I went with EverStart marine battery terminals from Walmart. They seem to be solid, are colour coded which I like, coated to prevent corrision, and I was there so thought I'd try them.
I drilled a hole in the flat area of the old terminal, and cut the rest of the terminal off with a Dremel, effectively turning it into a spade connector, and then attached it with nuts instead of the supplied wing nuts. There is just enough metal after cutting off the old terminal to drill a hole and file the edges. I removed the battery to work as there is limited space, putting a scrap piece of wood in the battery tray as a work surface when drilling and cutting.
There was also enough thread space to attach the battery maintainer cable on top of the nut and and then tighten it with a second nut.
The boots fit over the terminals.
The connection appears to be considerably more solid than the factory terminals.
I went with EverStart marine battery terminals from Walmart. They seem to be solid, are colour coded which I like, coated to prevent corrision, and I was there so thought I'd try them.
I drilled a hole in the flat area of the old terminal, and cut the rest of the terminal off with a Dremel, effectively turning it into a spade connector, and then attached it with nuts instead of the supplied wing nuts. There is just enough metal after cutting off the old terminal to drill a hole and file the edges. I removed the battery to work as there is limited space, putting a scrap piece of wood in the battery tray as a work surface when drilling and cutting.
There was also enough thread space to attach the battery maintainer cable on top of the nut and and then tighten it with a second nut.
The boots fit over the terminals.
The connection appears to be considerably more solid than the factory terminals.
