car battery advice needed

[greensusie51]

I have an old peugeot 306 diesel 1800 (1999). Over the last 6 months the battery seems to be running down and not re-charging so I go to use it and it doesnt start. The colchester wilko garage tested it for free as i assumed i needed to buy a new battery but they said it was fine and to give it a good charge as it had been sitting around a week with no use.

any way this keeps happening. i did notice the jubilee clip type connections to the battery weren't that tight so perhaps it wasnt connecting properly and
re-charging when I used it, but I cant physically tighten them anymore.

My question is what could i use to pad out the jubillee clip conectors which are obviously old and worn and loose to enable me to tighten them better and hopefully solve this problem. Perhaps silver foil or is that not a good
conductor.?

any advice appreciated.

 

[Stivino]

If it really does have jubilee clips holding the terminals on, you should go to a scrappy and get the proper connectors for that model of car.
Silver foil is made from aluminium and isn't a good conductor but you shouldn't be padding out your terminals with anything, you should get the proper ones.
Only when you have the correct bits can you do a proper test.

 

[greensusie51]

thanks for replying, I'm pretty sure they are the right connectors, I just couldnt think of a good way to describe the connectors and my problem of tightening them more.

They have a bolt which tightens the loop bit that goes round the battery terminal. And it seems to be at the tightest the bolt will go, but the loop bit still slips a bit on the battery terminal.

could this be the recharge problem?

 

[Stivino]

I know the terminals you mean. If you can't tighten them, consider replacing them with a different type.
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/items/__batt...keyword=batteries+terminals&ff4=228459_228460

 

[^neo^]

push them on tight as you can by hand, then give them a semi gentle tap with a hammer and they should grip quite nice