So I go to start the bike and after a pretty elongated cycle, it turns over...this is not typical of my bike. So now I drive to a location a short distance away and when I attempt to start the bike this time, nothing. I turn the key to accessory (the mileage shows), then to ignition (everything goes away...no mileage).


So I go to pull out the battery and see this:










My question is what could have caused this? A loose terminal? A bad connection?


Obviously I need a new battery but is this the fix or there another issue? I am just trying to find out why it would have melted the negative terminal like that...


Battery from Feb. 2014 and the terminal was not loose when I went to remove it....it appeared to be a slight brown in color (I am sure from the obvious heat that melted the terminal). Would that need replaced?

 

Talking with my brother, he mentioned to check the connections....I am not sure what is going to be good or bad (nothing looks horribly wrong, just a little bit of discoloration from the terminal melting).

If the connection were bad, what's the fix there?

 

Interesting.

I don't think there's too many things that can cause that scenario. The brass insert looks pretty clean with hardly any lead residue, and it looks to have simply popped out of it's lead tomb and rather blackish, like it never adhered well to the rest of the lead post during assembly...maybe it had gotten loose and arcing was taking place inside the post during start ups and eventually enough heat was generated to melt the insert out?

Is there any damage to the positive[+] battery cable? And what about a pigtail used for hooking up a battery tender? If you have one, is there any way that it could have come in contact with the negative[-] battery post and vibration caused it to wear through its insulation enough to cause a short to ground to melt the lead connector? Other than the above, I got nuthin' else. I'd check over the rest of the battery and other associated cables and take that battery to get tested in the very least, and take it from there.

=8^)

 

No issue that I can tell with the positive side...

 

I would check the battery cables for corrosion, green discoloring on the copper. If it gets bad enough it creates hard start issues and generates a lot of heat in the neg lead. This is because the corrosion acts as an insulator and now you are trying to draw the same amount of current through a smaller gauge wire.