URGENT help - battery terminal

[IceBoy]

Hi All,

I have just changed the battery on my sons car and unfortunately the nut and bolt (which holds the cable on the battery terminal) has crossed threaded.

I'm not sure what happened, it could have been an older issue, which has not manifested itself. I am not able to fully tighten the positive side.

Long story short, the round end of the cable is on the battery terminal and is probably hand tight. You have to wiggle it and it will come off.

Obviously the right thing to do is angle grind the bolt off and put a new one on but I don't have this option available to me.

It starts fine and drives but I fear, over a little time, it will not make the correct contact and cause problems.

Is there a glue to something else I can use, just to secure it better?

IceBoy

[HustleRussell]

Just get a new nut and bolt. Pennies. Anything else is a bodge.

[dumfriesdave]

Angle grinder next to a car battery?
A bit on the dangerous side.
Had similar issue before.
If you have a branch of 'The Range' nearby they sell the clamps with nut n bolt £4.99..
https://www.therange.co.uk/leisure/motoring/mainte...

Or local scrappy for replacement cable.

[LimSlip]

Certainly don't leave it loose, intermittent contact on the main battery cable will cause very high voltage spikes that can be damaging.

It'll only be an M6 nut and bolt, I struggling to understand why you can't replace it?

[randlemarcus]

Or, just temporarily, a stack of washers high enough that the nut tightens.

[steveo3002]

drive to nearest garage and ask them to fix it ...otherwise its going to jump off when you hit a bump

might also be possible to undo the other end and take the whole cable into the shed or to a garage to work on it some more

[Yabu]

Could you get a nut splitter onto it to break the nut?

[Captain Answer]

Back of beyond fix is to pack out with some bare wire, hammer the clamp over the terminal and tidy up any exposed wire so it won't contact anything.. gets you out a bind but not really something that is needed when you are probably less than 10 minutes from a local motor factors that can just sell you a new one to fit