Battery Clamp Repair

What? No witty post title. Well it's hard to think of one for such a dull post, at least one that isn't tenuous in the extreme.

But anyway, Earlier I wrote about my garage finding a few faults, the battery securing clamp is the easiest and cheapest one for me to fix right now so I set to it.

Luckily for me the clamp had failed open, with the battery loose, so it was easy to remove that and the battery tray.

Once out we can see the culprit:

That's the fella, a brass (I think) threaded insert splined into plastic. Not going to help much when corrosion starts. So out came the grinder and the bolt head was cut off and the remainders removed by flourish of hammer before the dremel flattened the underside ready for the repair.

Unfortunately it started to rain at this point so I hurriedly reassembled the tray to refit in the car, no pictures of the fix.

Basically I already had an M8 nut welded to a piece of flat steel that was going to be used on a wheel carrier for my old van. I cut this out and made it fit the wedge shape that can be seen in the photo above. A snug fit that although being "loose", it wont fall out when undone to remove the battery. Then I greased up a new Stainless Steel M8 flanged bolt, and refitted the battery clamp.

Back in the car and all is secure, and works exactly as the original should have.

After re-applying the battery, I had to recalibrate the tail glass. This is set to lower to the bottom if power is removed and reapplied, forcing the need to recalibrate. No trouble, all I did was use the console switch first to make sure it was at it's lowest point - switch down until it beeps, then all the way up.

Hey presto, job done.