I bought a battery for my car last week, finally got some time to install it. I noticed the threads for the bolt are recessed fairly deep into the hole. So deep, there is at most 2-3 turns of thread engagement. I planned to returned that battery, only to find every battery is like that. Is this the way they are making them now?? I don’t remember the old battery being like this.

 

Most were fairly deep as I remember way back when. I was never a fan of the side post battery.

 

Maybe they are all like that. Maybe the old battery was the same way. If I had it here I would compare, I already turned it in for a core.

I installed the new battery it works fine. I wonder why they put the threads so far down into the hole? The battery posts are soft lead, it seems to me you would want as much thread engagement as possible.

The biggest hassle with side posts is jumper cables. In my experience the side post batteries don’t suffer from corrosion as badly as top posts. I just prefer to keep the battery posts out of the way, less Iikely to accidentally drop a wrench and have it land on the terminals.

My Ram has top post terminals, one of the first things I did when I bought it is put the rubber insulating covers over the terminals. I cringe whenever I see people working under the hood and set tools on the battery.

 

The terminal should have a circle extrusion that locates in the plastic hole for locating your bolt to the hole. It sort of sits in there, and you can hold it while you start the bolt. The front contour of the metal contact is a little weird on this one.

There is not a lot of threads in the hole, and they're coarse. It is quite easy to go from not tight, to barely holding in there, to too many threads on the bolt and you land on the bottom before the clamp force is there. Sometimes, a lock washer to back the bolt out a bit to avoid landing prematurely helps.

I am dicking around with mine. One thing I like about my Monte Carlo is the battery is right there. Both Cutlasses I have have that diagonal "I'm headed out to the headlight; I got nothing to lose at all" thing going on with the battery tray really tucked in there.I HAD a negative disconnect, but it's janky the way it has to fit. I'm going to move it to the positive after heat shrinking it for contact.

 

That’s my concern as well. The cables need to be tight enough to ensure good electrical connection, but with the soft lead batter posts, combined with limited thread engagement, it’s a fine line between tight enough and pulled threads.

 

I like to take the bolt out, put it in and bottom out without the terminal, and see how much there is between the bottom of the bolt head and the battery. That should be less than the thickness of the terminal, but not by much. If it's a lot less, the bolt's too short, and if it's more, you'll be loose; time for a washer.