Anyone know off hand the size of the nut on the negative battery cable termination- it is small and i am partial blind and have trouble with small parts and dont have the ideal place to wrench on my heap-drive way, usually on my back on a piece of cardboard-thanks for any information.

 

I believe it is 1/2" in size.

 

Thanks dizzle,
the positive was half inch,the negative is much smaller- at least on my truck.
I will probably just cut them in the middle of the clamp and drill for a larger size nut and bolt

 

Another common size is 3/8", which yours may be; however, the plan to cut and replace would work fine.

 

I would guess the nut has corroded away. Standard size would be a 5/16 bolt which is 1/2" nut. another common size is 10 MM metric. That will be smaller than 7/16 but larger than 3/8.

Rick

 

Rick,
You are correct- after not finding a wrench to fit, metric or standard, i got my thick glasses and found it was mostly rotted away- thats why it looked so small- strange it corroded evenly around the sides and looked like it just shrunk- anyway a band saw down the middle and a few slices on each side cured the problem- after 13 years on the stock batterys - i guess i got my money out of them- thanks all for the help.

 

13 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should contact the battery manufacturer, they may give you a free set just for telling them.

Rick

 

Hold on a second, 13 years on a set of batteries and you are hard of sight? Are you sure you read the calendar correctly.

 

Mine went 10 1/2 years.

 

Yeah i know 13!
came new with the truck and i never touched them til now.
believe me plenty of other stuff failed prematurely- so i figure i was due for a small victory

 

6 years on my replacement batteries...So far so good..

 

I use a small metric adjustable
If that doesn't work because battery acid had lunch then a small set of vice grips.
I said small on both because it really sucks to weld a wrench to the truck....NOT THAT I'VE EVER DONE THAT

 

On my 2001 2500 its a 13MM. I currently have 11 years on my batteries but am about to change them out. they are starting to get weak in the cold.

 

albo- congrats on thr long life of those batterys!!!

 

So I replaced those old batteries. After eleven years of service one of the batteries was getting kind of weak. I decided to go ahead and replace them both before they left me stranded some place. One was still good though. I was amazed.