On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:38:07 -0400, blueman wrote:

aemeijers writes:

mm wrote:
On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:54:29 -0400, blueman wrote:

Perhaps not technically home repair but my car is like an extension of
my home...

Anyway, I noticed that there is a lot of "crud" (grainy white/green
stuff - looks like dried toothpaste) on the positive (red) terminal of
my car battery.

Car otherwise works & looks fine.

Question:
- Is it important to clean the crud off?

Yes, if there's enough I believe it conducts electricity and will
slowly drain your battery. Or maybe even quickly at some point.

- What is the best & also easiest/fastest way to do it?

I pour 5 or 10 heaping tablespoon's worth, I'm guessing, of baking
soda from the box on to the top of the battery and then pour water,
usually warm water from a tea-kettle, on top of that, slowly to not
wash it off before it neutralizes the acid. When it stops bubbling,
it's done, and I wash the rest off with the rest of the tea-kettle.

HR Bob's is the correct method but you asked for easiest/fastest, and
as far as I know, mine works just as well. Maybe the other method is
meant for shops which will keep a bottle of solution around to do more
than one car.

Thanks

That is a good first step, if you have baking soda around, and reduces
the chances of trashing your favorite shirt. But you STILL need to
take the connections loose and clean the terminals.

-Is it recommended to also completely remove the battery from the car or
is it enough to remove the connections and do it in place?

I clean it in place too. It's fine that way. Someone called
attention to your subject line. I pay little or no attention to those
and only look in the body of a post, but you did emphasize terminal in
your first post too, yet I concentrated on crud.

If there is crud right on the terminal, right next to the where it
touches the post, it might be under the terminal too. It's probably a
good idea to remove the cables and clean the posts and inside the
terminals too.

Remove the ground first. The one with a - symbol on the battery (not
a + ). Now the symbols can be hard to see, and in all recent cars the
plus terminal is the one whose cable goes to the starter motor or a
solenoid. The negative terminal goes to a bolt on the engine. It's
the negative, the ground, you want to remove first. This seemed
counter-intuitive to me, but if your wrench touches the body of the
car while you're working on the negative, nothing will happen. Then
after the neg is disconnected and you are using your wrench on the
positive, and your wrench touches the body of the car, nothing will
happen. If OTOH, the negative was still connected, there would be a
big hot spark, enough to melt metal, at least a small amount. So
disconnect the ground, the negative, first. If you're not sure,
there might be a label somewhere, or someone with a meter or who knows
cars can tell you which is the negative.

If that doesn't work, clean the battery once without disconnecting it
and then maybe you'll be able to see the + and - symbols, although
they can be on the side where it's hard to get a good look, or
obscured by the terminals.