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Positive Battery Post completely black - car not starting

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Eddie298

New member
I ran into this problem Sunday. i drove home from a friends house and about an hour later i headed to the store but the car wouldn't start. i looked at the battery and noticed that the positive battery post was completely black, as if some one put a black plastic cap over it. i grabbed some sand paper and sanded off all of the blackness from the post and the terminal and then my car started right up. i went to autozone and replaced the terminal thinking that was the problem.

Today i ran into this again. i was about to head to class when the car wouldn't start, i knew exactly what the problem was so i got my sand paper and popped the hood. yep, i was right the post was black again. i took the sand paper and did what i had done before, but this time it wouldn't start. it took 3 days for the post to turn completely black again! whats going on?

The only thing i can think of that could be the issue is that i did a big 3 upgrade about 3 weeks ago. i followed all of the factory wires and just added the bigger gauge cable while still keeping the factory cables.

Thinking it may be the battery... no idea though.
 


The whole point of the big three is to along get rid of the factory cables the grounds can stay but all you need is to run a your new wires from The battery to fuse box then from alternator to fuse box disconnect the originals.
 
a lot of people told me to leave the factory wiring because electricity travels through the path of least resistance, so those factories will be "just in case" sort of thing. i did neg to chassis ground, negative to engine block ground, and then i positive directly to alternator.
 
When I helped a friend do his we completely removed factory grounds and wiring. Really if u upgraded all the wires to a much heavier gauge u should remove the stock or at least disconnect it
 
i guess i'll try it when i get home, theres some wires that are extremely tied up with other stuff so you think its a god idea if i cover the ends with a tone of electrical tape?
 


Also explain what u mean by extremely tied up with other stuff. Have u had the battery tested to make sure its fine. And take a pic of said black stuff on it so we can see
 
i removed all the the facotry wiring that i upgraded except the alternator one, i'll try to do that one tomorrow morning have to study for finals. by tied up i ment it the wires were in a plastic tubbing and within that they were taped together with electrical tape, it doesn't matter anymore since i removed them. um during the winter i had the battery checked at autozone and they said everything was fine, checked my alternator and other stuff as well. I'll upload some pictures i took this morning.

I bought some terminal battery post cleaning kit cleaned the crap out of both posts and replaced a janky factory terminal, i took the car for a small ride to see how it was and its voltage on the DIC was 14.4-8, after about 10 minutes of driving it went down to 13.1-2...im afriad its going to do it again. ill post up the pictures i took in a second

I had already sanded most of it off from the sides when i remembered to take pictures but you can see on the top of this picture there are black blotches, before i had sanded them down the entire post was that color, it actually looked like it was made out of the black plastic casing.
EcbL3Va.jpg


Here it is from the side, you can tell the difference on the bottom of the post where i didn't sand it down very well.


and this is just a top view of the negative post
Y4msXEI.jpg
 
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The most important aspect of "big 3" is to replace the ground wire for the purpose of greater potential. Why? Because smaller asian designed vehicles don't handle extra loads very well since the balance between efficiency and cost of parts was done so well. That's really where a lot of this began. It's also due in part to individuals needing to make repairs to their vehicle. Consequently, not realizing their "big 3" upgrade fixed issues of corrosion, loose connections, etc....people just blame "factory wiring" and now everybody think it's a huge must.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF ADDING ELECTRONICS IS ESTABLISHING A GOOD SOLID GROUND!!! Most people don't...another reason why "big 3" is such a big hit.

Common characteristics of a good ground...
 
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