Does anyone know what exactly causes that powdery residue to form on the postive battery terminal? I clean mine with a wire brush but after a few months it keeps coming back.

 

sounds like the battery is overcharging and teh acid is spewing out. My s-10 does it all the time. I beleive the powder is lead sulfide off the top of my head. Check the voltage out of the alternator. Shouldnt be more then 14.5 volts.

 

Hummm, that might make sense, I will check the alternator, I also have a car stereo capicitor wired directly to the battery, maybe this "cap" is going bad? The fuse block where the cap is wired into near the battery also have this powerdy corrosion....

 

It's because it's positively charged.

I used to be in the telephone business, I was the engineer for a company that made the stuff that goes in the central office, that routs calls. I learned that a hundred years ago, they discovered that if the system battery was positive with respect to ground, the metal that the junderground cables was made out of would be eaten by the natural chemical reactions in the soil, but that if the battery was negative, the metal would be unharmed, but instead the metallic compounds in the soil would accrete onto the cable. Some of those cables are still in use, a hundred years later. All of the cables that had positive battery have long since had to be replaced; and of course they've since switched over to negative battery in COs. That's why your phone lines have -48V on them instead of + whatever.

Keep some kind of grease on it, that minimizes the ability of the oxygen in the air to attack it.

 

Thanks for the advise. I have sprayed everything with WD-40, but if you reccomend I have a tub of bearing grease I can coat the connections with if you thing that it would not interfere with the flow of electrons!