Community Forums

hawkeye1995 · 02-28-2020, 10:51 PM

Usually, if you have lots of white corrosion on the positive terminal, it means that battery is getting weak. If you clean it, and a few weeks later you see lots of corrosion, there will be something wrong. This happen to me on my 2 house batteries. The positive side would keep getting white corrosion, but the indicator would always show about 12.7 to 12.9 volts. Anyway, I decided to just check each 6 volt battery, and found that one would not pass indicate past 5.2 to 5.5 volts. After changing both 6 volt batteries, the corrosion problem went away. Just my two cents. Most any time a battery is producing white corrosion, it is about to be a total fail. It's an indication it can not hold a full charge. Good luck. Baking soda is a great cheap way to remove battery acid. You can buy products at any auto parts store that can do the same, but dollars.

W4KMA · 02-29-2020, 07:09 AM

My batteries are hard to get to for maintenance, requiring a mirror, flashlight and water in a small cup. Last year I cleaned connections and even made a couple new cables with a crimper I bought off eBay. After that, I installed one of the auto watering systems. That was some of the best money I've ever spent on the RV. There's no longer any corrosion and topping off water only takes a minute.

Mudfrog · 02-29-2020, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FatChance

Why not just remove the ground cable? It only takes one minute, at most. Is there any reason not to?

There was this one time, a long time ago, that I disconnected the positive first. I knew not to let it touch anything negative but guess what? ,, it slipped from my hand and did! Luckily there was no damage but it did scare the bajeebus out of me. For certain, I'll never try taking that shortcut again.

As Twinboat stated, the wise thing to do would be to check and clean all connections. To do this properly, each needs to be removed. Spraying cleaning stuff on, pouring coca cola on, and/or applying baking soda to the post isn't likely to clean where it needs to.

Mark_K5LXP · 02-29-2020, 08:30 AM

There is no economy to doing this any other way than taking all the cables off and servicing all the terminals. You cannot fix this by dumping something on them. The observable corrosion is an insulator, so even if you were able to "rinse" it away you're not restoring the contact area between the terminal and the cable clamp. The only way to fix this is to remove the contamination and corrosion to clean metal and re-connect.

I use a tool that restores the proper shape of the post and resurfaces the interior of the terminal to match. A very light application of grease as a moisture barrier then reassemble. I have not found a better method to achieve a longer lasting or lower resistance connection.

https://www.amazon.com/Performance-T.../dp/B000N31ZYY

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

NRR · 02-29-2020, 06:29 PM

I had a car battery blow up in my face many, many years ago. Wearing glasses saved my eyes.

In your case I would want all known loads removed. There will be parasitic loads unknown.

You really have to disconnect the negative cable to the chassis.

To do that I would want a fan blowing air away from that negative terminal while disconnecting it because you have so many batteries. Hydrogen goes up and can accumulate where ever above the batteries.

Then I would clean every terminal. Then you should be good to go like new.

I would use a fan reconnecting the negative terminal also to those batteries. Why? You only get lucky once in a life time. I did.

blackhawkscp · 03-01-2020, 07:01 AM

The one thing that gets me confused is since the batteries (6 of them) are connected in series and parallel if I disconnect the negative on the one battery that needs cleaning, then the positive. Isn’t the positive still as dangerous as if I never disconnected the negative? If that makes sense.

twinboat · 03-01-2020, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackhawkscp

The one thing that gets me confused is since the batteries (6 of them) are connected in series and parallel if I disconnect the negative on the one battery that needs cleaning, then the positive. Isn’t the positive still as dangerous as if I never disconnected the negative? If that makes sense.

Sure is, that's why you typically remove the negative cables that go to the chassis ground.

As mentioned, if you cover the cable end, I used gloves, it will not short to ground.

Another trick is to first completely remove the 2 jumper cables between each 6 volt battery. Once they are off, there is no circuit for power to flow to ground. Now you can remove, clean and replace each cable end, one at a time.