The Importance of Maintenance

This week, due to class cancellations, I will briefly post on something I did at work.

While working on a truck for another issue, it was necessary to unhook the batteries. Part of "modus operandi" where I work is to clean pretty much everything we remove if we are putting the same parts back on. So while I had the battery cables disconnected, I went through all the terminals and cable ends and cleaned them all up. Here is what I found on some of them:

I bead-blasted the cable ends and cleaned the nuts for the terminals up on a wire wheel. We had to replace one cable end because it was so badly corroded.

Reflection:

It's good practice to get into the habit of routinely checking and cleaning things such as battery cables and terminals, especially if you have to disconnect them to work on something else anyway. I routinely clean any electrical connections such as this whenever I have them off. It may take an extra minute or two, but it helps to solve a lot of avoidable electrical problems which are the result of the "green" corrosion pictured above.