BATTERY TERMINALS PROTECTION

What do you use on your battery terminals to stop the white furry growth

Vaseline is very good, I used it on all of my classics

Battery terminal grease. :yesnod:

For those of us that don't have Vaseline.

Wurth Battery Terminal Grease Completed

I use dielectric grease on battery terminals and every lucar connector on older British cars.

Vaseline, or petroleum jelly is always recomended in the text books, however some garden variety lithium grease will work fine. I think the difference is that you can smear the terminal with the correct gloop before fitting and tightening the clamp, while this may give a high resistance with lithium grease.. So i go over my terminals after assembly I always put a thin film around the terminal on the plastic of the battery case for a few mm just to stop water laying there. I also put a smear over the earth point of the battery -ve strap, just in case it is close enough to get some chemicals on it.
This works fine for years, it seems to be keeping water away thats the key.

Water and air are the culprits.
I also use dielectric grease having owned cars with the dreaded Lucar connectors in the past.

THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THE ANSWERS so far :thumbsup:

The reason i started the thread was because an "EXPERT" (we all know what an expert is!!) has written a letter to the MGOC and is published in the January 2012 issue (page 43) titled Dangers of Vaseline and stating "" in particular to the danger of adding a dollop of Vaseline to battery terminals. VASELINE is a petroleum jelly and burns furiously if ignited, for example by a spark!!!!!!!

Vaseline has been the choice of thousands of mechanics for umteen years for battery terminals and i am not aware of any underbonnet fire occouring. It will burn, when the jelly is heated so much that it gives off a vapour which can then be ignited as it is the vapour that burns.

i am going to do a little experiment to see if i can ignite a dollop of the stuff on a battery terminal, and will post the results ~ if you hear a large bang call the fire brigade :evil:

If your battery terminals are tightened properly there is no danger of a spark. Electricity would have to jump a gap in order to create a spark. The only other cause would be something metal shorting out on the positive terminal in which case a little vaseline would be the least of your problems. And I say "A little" as you only need a thin coating to protect the terminal. All you are doing is trying to keep air out. A dollop is unnecessary and would only create the ideal "S**t on a Blanket" scenario.
Having worked in an MG garage in my distant past I can say globs of grease on battery terminals is worse than a fur coat of corrosion. All it takes to remove the corrosion is a kettle full of boiling water followed by a proper terminal clean with a wire brush or some sandpaper. A smear of grease/Vaseline just tales a wipe with a rag, but too much grease is a messy waste of time to clean off..

12v wont jump much of a gap so we can ignore sparks.Of course when you stop cranking 100A to zero in few milliseconds will generate a few volts, this is how an ignition coil works. But to get a good cranking current you need solid connections at the battery posts so no gap, no sparks.A high impedance in the starter circuit will generate a few watts and i have seen smoke coming off of battery posts with poor contacts. With some guess numbers, if we had 1/2 ohm at a post and short circuit elesewhere this would result in 24A max (internal losses in the battery would see terminal voltage go down to about 9v. ). Power is I x I/r I make this 1 Kw. So there is the sort of heat you need to generate to simulate what i think would be the worst case.

That would be an uncommon occurence but regardless, as long as you just used a thin film of grease it would tend to fry off rather than catch fire, and if it did burn it wouldn't have enough fuel to burn for more than a few seconds.
Your odds of frying some wiring due to a short is much greater.

:evil: :evil: I have now done a "burn" test on some Vaseline and i had a real problem in getting it to light!!!!!!! :rant: I put about half a tea spoonful (a very large dollop) on the bottom of an upturned baked bean can , first of all i tried lighting it with the spark generator on the blow torch and nothing, then tried lighting it with a match, again nothing, then i tried lighting it with the blow torch flame, still nothing at all. it would not light at all :rant: :rant: I then heated the liquid Vaseline with the blowtorch flame and it would still not catch alight, even though it was generating a lot of smoke. it did catch alight in the end with a very poor small flame, which was as easy to blow out as the candles on a birthday cake.

I am satisfied that Vaseline is NOT HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE and as far as i am concerned will continue to ues it for battery terminals and of course all of the other uses it was intended for :omg:

Thank all of you for your help and advice and i shall be writing to the "numpty" who had his letter in Enjoying MG. :whistle:

I'll look forward to seeing your rebuttal complete with the scientific test, pictures and a link to the video! :thumbsup:
That'll teach Mr. Numpty to try to pull the wool over The T-Bar Tech Experts!