Battery Terminal Odd Size

I have an odd issue. My positive battery terminal on my '08 V8 is pretty hashed and I want to replace it. When I bought the car the dealer had put in a Toyota branded battery and I'm wondering if it has an oddly sized positive post. I've bought three different terminals and none of them will slide all the way on to the positive post. Anyone else run into this before? I don't really want to pay $22 for a Toyota terminal and don't really want to pay for a new battery when this one is only a year old.

 

Since its an 08 99.9999999% sure its not the factory battery. So buy a Toyota one prolly won't solve the problem. Did you try to spread the terminal a little bit more before putting it on?


If it is your factory battery guess miracles do happen.

 

Well it is a Toyota battery. The dealer I bought the 4Runner from put it in last August right before I bought it. Whether or not it matches the original battery these came with I don't know.

 

You try just spraying some CRC cleaning on it and see if it works wonders?

Or by hashed you mean rusty.

 

Battery posts are standard size (unfortunately, there are 4 different standards). However, with most standards, the positive post is larger than the negative post to make it more difficult to accidentally reverse the polarity when installing (serious problem if this happens). Most battery terminals are made of a soft metal (used to be lead back in the day) that can easily be resized with a big screwdriver. Also, a lot of terminals will have some small tabs of metal in the split, right next to the bolt (usually outside the bolt). These tabs can be cut off which will allow the clamp to be tightened onto a smaller terminal.