Driving and Arc Welding

Sometimes you can be multitasking without realizing it.  This time I was out cruising in Ripper at night.  I had some funny electrical problems when I made right turns.  The radio would cut out, and other electrical things became intermittent.  The engine would lose ignition momentarily.  There were sparks flying out from under my hood when the electrical issues happened.  Well, this is highly concerning, and I quickly found a place to stop, and inspect things under the hood.

Once I opened the hood I was kinda disappointed that it was such a stupid failure.  Something that should not happen, but does because of vibration.  Ripper is a little sport car, with sport suspension, and gets Driven.  So, vibration is a significant thing.  Here is a shot of the battery back in January.

There are a few issues here.  The first is the hold down nuts are not locking nuts, and do not have lock washers.  The nut that remained, in front, seemed like it had some loctite applied to it, and the threads were gummy.  The rear nut was gone, and the threads were clean, no surprise there.  So, obviously we missed a spot of loctite there.  But, really, loctite is not the right way to do this.  Then there are the exposed conductors.  I think I need to call this a design issue.  There is a solid, 4mm screw, tied directly to the body, right next to the positive terminal of the battery, and also is, coincidentally, the positive terminal connected to the alternator.

In "normal" conditions the Battery Hold Down Bracket is a a couple inches away from the exposed Positive Terminal of the Battery.  So, if the Battery Hold Down Bracket is holding the battery like it is designed then the Battery Hold Down Bracket will never make contact with the Positive Terminal of the Battery.  Vibration makes Shit Happen.  It looks like the nut on the back of the Battery Hold Down Bracket vibrated loose, and came off.  This released tension on the back of the battery.  The front J Bolt held the Battery Hold Down Bracket for a while, but when it slipped loose the Battery Hold Down Bracket started moving around, the Battery started moving around, and eventually the Battery Hold Down Bracket started making intermittent contact with the Positive Terminal of the Battery.  That is when the funny things started happening.

This is shot of the front J Bolt.  The evidence of the Arc Welding is there, and this may further indicate that there was no Loctite here.  The Arcs conducted to the Bracket, and the Nut is directly adjacent to the bracket, and may have been "sticky" because it was in close proximity to the Arcing.  Similar Arc scars are on the J end of this J Bolt.

To prevent this in the future there are a couple things I have done.  Insulating the Positive Terminal of the Battery will prevent potential grounds from touching the Positive Terminal of the Battery.  The double layer of heat shrink is a good start, but I want something that completely covers the entire terminal.  Then, also, I want to prevent the Battery from getting loose in the first place.

Adding a Lock Nut, or a Jam Nut, will prevent the nuts from moving in the first place without gumming up the threads.  A couple Nuts, and some Heat Shrink would have prevented this mayhem easily.  Ripper is different from my other Toyota vehicles.  Ripper is raw, no frills...

Ripper