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How To Neutralize Clean Battery Acid Corrosion

Created on: 2014-02-26

Find out how to clean the battery and neutralize any acid corrosion with these instructions

  1. step 1 :Disconnecting the Battery
    • Mix baking soda and water
    • Pour the mixture over the negative and positive cables
    • Let the corrosion fizz and sit
    • Wash off the mixture
    • Remove the negative terminal with an 10mm socket or wrench
    • Remove the positive terminal with an 10mm socket or wrench
  2. step 2 :Cleaning the Terminal
    • Twist the terminal cleaner on both of the terminals
    • Clean the cable with the brush part of the cleaner
    • Let the terminal sit in baking soda and water if it's in bad condition
    • Clean off the batter with a rag
    • Clean off the cable with a rag
  3. step 3 :Connecting the Battery
    • Reconnect the positive battery cable
    • Reconnect the negative battery cable
    • Spray battery protector onto the terminals

Tools needed

  • Water

    Battery Protector

    Terminal Cleaner

    10mm Wrench

    10mm Socket

    Ratchet

    Cloth Rags

    Baking Soda

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to clean up your battery and neutralize any corrosion, acid corrosion that you're going to have on it, typically happening on the positive terminal. You can see this one's in really bad shape.

Now, why would you want to do it? This could cause a no start condition, and, overall, acid leaking down is not good, as well. What we're going to do in order to do that is just use a little baking soda, a little water, we've got a terminal cleaner, and we'll finish it off with some battery protector. Anytime we're working with battery acid or whatnot, or this kind of corrosion, you're going to want to wear some gloves and some goggles. It's a good idea.

What we'll start to do first is mix the water into the soda here, and we can go ahead and pour it over the terminal. You can see as it's fizzing, it's doing its job. Let that sit for a little bit. We've got everything cleaned up here.

For the most part, I'm going to go ahead and remove the terminals on this battery. It's just happens to be a 10mm, which is pretty standard. Always want to do the negative side first and then the positive side.

All right so we've got the two terminals, our two leads off, and you see from this one how badly corroded it is. It should really be replaced, but what we're going to do now is use our cleaner on the terminal. You need to put it on and twist. Do the same for the negative; it's not in as bad shape.

Then, most of these tools have a little brush on the inside, so see if I can get the rest of this stuff out. If you want you can fill up another tub of baking soda and water and let that sit in there for a few minutes to get the rest of it off. While that's soaking, I'm going to clean up the rag and the rest of this. I had this soaking for a few minutes. Pull it out and clean it up. I get as much of this gunk out of here as I can. Good thing is this has been neutralized, so it's not going to cause any further damage. All right, that said, I can reconnect it. Again, like I said, this should be replaced, but for the purpose of this video we're going to reinstall this one for now. Here' the negative. To prevent this in the future, we're going to use some battery protector and spray it onto the terminals. All set.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.


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