Thanks for the update. This should have crossed my mind to share an update as well.
My dad drives an Infiniti i35. Apparently since summer 2017 he has been having issues with his battery dying when he comes back to the car on the weekends. I recommended he take the battery to Autozone for testing and they said it was fine; so they suggested he disconnect the terminal when he leaves for the week.
That suggestion didn't sit well to me - cars are designed in such a way that they should be able to sit for months and keep going.
Fast forward to the first week of January 2018 after he comes back from vacation. The previous day my brother reconnected the terminal and started the car with no problems, but he didn't think (nor desire I'm guessing) to remove the terminal again. The next day my dad tries the car, it just struggled to crank without turning over. Eventually it trickled down to a click when he turned the ignition.
He calls in the big guns (yours truly
) and I drive 1 hour to fool around with this thing in 4 degrees F. [Small sacrifice for what the man has done for us as a single father btw, I just wanted to paint the picture].
I try to use my 2 gauge jumper cable that is always a sure-starter but his car doesn't seem to catch quite right. I try with the jumpers on the terminals on the battery as well as grounding to the car itself, but no dice. It just barely gets there, and I assumed the battery was so dead that even straight jumping to the body wasn't going to cut it.
Earlier, while troubleshooting over the phone I had suggested he jams a screwdriver in the terminal to make it tighter since the constant removal and re-installation exerts premature wear. That hadn't worked so I went to walmart and bought 3 terminals on my way over.
The
POSITIVE one was in bad shape and I replaced it.
Why the positive you ask? Well, that's the one the guys at Autozone told him to disconnect.
Oh well... I don't sell batteries for a living, so they probably know something I don't. I advised him to disconnect the
NEGATIVE one if he ever finds himself in that position again.
Back to the story.
I replace the +ve terminal and jump it again. After about 3 tries, it finally turned over and I took it for a highway cruise to let the alternator do its magic to the battery.
Every time we talk I ask him about the car and the handful of times he has started the car, it has done it with no hesitation. First time start, starts like a new car.
The verdict: a bad terminal that we lived with for far too long.