so i’ve got a 2001 nissan frontier sc, and it wouldn’t start–headlights worked, but i just heard a “click-click-click” sound. AAA guy saw there was a lot of corrosion on the neg terminal, jumped it, got it home, and then i put in a new battery.
but again it won’t start and i hear that clicking sound (starter?). after cleaning the battery terminal, i found it was REALLY corroded (ate completely through, making it a “C” rather than an “O” fitting around the post!).
does this sound like the culprit (not enough contact between the terminal and post), that is a $5 fix for a new negative battery cable? perhaps the AAA guy’s jump completed the circuit with his jumper cables? or am i being naive??
Sounds more than likely to me. Check the other end of that cable, too, and make a point to check those things out every 6 mos. or so.
That's what it sounds like to me. Make sure you clean both ends of all battery cables as well as replacing the damaged one.For exactly that reason, as a routine practice on every used car I buy, I replace the main positive lead with a big diameter cable, and run three new grounds: battery to block, block to body, body to battery. It costs about thirty bucks total, and avoids a whole host of weird problems.
It’s amazing how many car starting problems are caused by just the lack of maintenance of two battery connections.
From your description of the problem I would suspect that the wire near the battery connector has also corroded internally. You may need to either replace the whole cable like the others stated or reterminate the exsisting cable with a new battery connector that is connected to the wire beyond the internal wire damage, if you have enough slack to do that. To keep the problem from reoccurring you can apply some corrosion inhibitor over the connections. You can get that at a auto parts store.