How to replace a battery/clean terminal

Replacing a battery can be dangerous if you mix the positive and negative cables up dangerous enough to blow up the battery. It can also be dangerous if you touch the negative and positive with something metal. For this job, you're going to need some safety equipment and those should be some type of eye protection. Changing a battery can be very dangerous but it's also very simple to do and you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself.

Getting the right battery

The first step of this process is to find the sticker on your battery that tells you how many cold cranking amps it has and that’s how you will find out what battery you need. The Cold-cranking amps is a batteries industry rating used to determine the ability of the battery to start or crank up an engine when the weather is cold. What this means is if you get a battery with a lower cold-cranking amp the vehicle will not start.  

Taking the old battery out and putting the new one in

For this step you're going to need a wrench set find the size that fits the bolt or nut that is holding the cables on to the battery, take the cables off. There is going to be a metal strap the holds your battery down loosen that strap and take the battery out.

Now you’re going to want to take the new battery and put it in where you took the old one out and put the strap back on and tighten it up. This is a very important part you have to make sure you put the positive to the positive and the negative to the negative and tighten up the cables make sure the nice and tight and turn the car on and see if it turns over and turns on.  

There is corrosion and green stuff on my battery cables

Your battery cables are dirt which is no big deal it happens now to fix this your going to need a wire brush and some battery terminal cleaner and really scrub those cables down once you have them clean your going to need to add some battery terminal grease it’s a red grease and it helps prevent any more corrosion on the battery terminals.


Changing a battery is an easy thing to do in your car but it can also be very dangerous so if you are going to do this make sure you have the proper safety equipment to get the job done.