Seriously Toyota?

So, many of you have heard my awesome story about spending a week fighting with my Toyota Tacoma and pulling, testing, and replacing multiple parts (culminating in buying a brand new starter to replace a working one because there was no way I was risking ever having to get the starter out of a Tacoma again).  Eventually I realized the entire problem had been caused by a $4 battery terminal.

I have loved both of my Toyotas, but I'm starting to realize battery terminals are not their strong suit.



Last night, Beth and I tried to drive to Atlanta.   Halfway there, after stopping (first for a ticket for making an illegal left turn.  Hurray.  Then for gas.) my car refused to start.

We eventually got a jump, but then were worried the problem might be a bad alternator, so we drove it home and bailed on our evening plans (which we both feel pretty terrible about), keeping out fingers crossed that we would even make it back to my house.

We got back, and then the battery behaved, both that night and this morning.

So I drove up to O'Reilly (there's one about 500 yards from my house) and pulled the battery to have it tested.

It tested bad, and it was probably the original battery (an 84 month that has likely been in the car since sometime in 2005), so I replaced it.  The fellow at O'Reilly pointed out the green corrosion on the top of the old battery though, and said "it looks like your cable or connector is bad, that's copper corrosion." (duh.  I was too brainfried by being freezing cold and my hatred at having to ask anyone for help to think about corrosion colors last night).

So I also bought a spare terminal for the negative terminal (the positive terminal has a weird but rugged anti-theft-device replacing the original, and is in fine shape) and pulled the old one off.

The battery would have died soon anyway, but I'm sure it wasn't helped by the terminal I replaced, shown here with most of the corrosion scraped away.












Seriously Toyota?  This is a bullshit part.

Everything else in the engine still looks pretty pristine.   Except this piece of shit.

[sigh].

At least it's fixed now and I don't have to worry about it being the alternator.