2012 sluggish after oil change

I'll do that this evening. It seemed to drive fine this morning on my way to work. And no I didn't remove the wire on the chassis

 

Cables and posts are NASTY Get some baking soda and clean them up! Where you have that tape around the crimp area, you may have corrosion in the cable end itself, if you do, get new posts and strip the cable until it is clean, and use heat shrink over the crimp. If you are in any area that has snow and uses mag chloride on the roads unless you have good solid crimps and heat shrink and some anti corrosion stuff on nice clean cables your problem will repeat.

 

Sounds good. Is there a special tool for crimping that big of cable?

 

They are expensive, but you may be able to check with some local shops to see if they have a crimp set with proper terminals. There is a crimp tool that you hit with hammer but I dont reccomend that.

 

The negative cable looks pretty bad. Did you clean the terminals and battery posts with one of them battery cleaning wire tools? 100 grit sandpaper should work also. Dont use a screwdriver or knife or other similar tool as that will create uneven surfaces.

 

Baking soda is you friend, Use it.

 

Ever tried disconnecting the battery with the truck running?

 

Nope nope, slightly different story this time. Drained the battery fluid but overtopped the blinker fluid reservoir. Classic blunder.

 

Unless you have a bad alternator it will stay running

 

All I had was a wire brush

 

You did a pretty crap job of cleaning those!

 

I had the same reaction. But, if the alternator is running and the battery drops off (say due to connector corrosion), is the truck smart enough to regulate the alternator voltage output sans battery load? I wonder if any electronics could be damaged by the alternator compensating and putting out too high a load. Could the ECU itself be damaged?

Edit: rereading the original post, battery was disconnected with engine off, so regardless of the answers to the above questions sounds like it’s not the sequence of events in this case.

 

Thanks man. I used what I had

 

The answer is yes; it is possible to fry your computer by disconnecting the battery while the engine is running. Delicate electronics do not like voltage spikes.

 

The cleanup could be a little better, but it should've been adequate enough to not make it run like crap. However, if you sprayed the terminals before you connected them that could create a bad connection. I believe that spray is usually a non-conductive sealant.

 

Exactly. Clean first then reconnect. Then spray some fluid film or whatever battery terminal spray to keep corrosion away.

 

I sprayed then connected dammit

 

I agree that you should spray the corrosion inhibitor on after making your connection but if your connection is good and tight it shouldn't be a problem. Cranking the starter is going to be about the biggest current draw your gonna have so if that's working ok then don't worry about it.

I do think it would be a good idea to mix up some baking soda and water and try to clean more of that corrosion off. Some claim that CocaCola poured on the terminals will do a good job of cleaning also but I, personally, have never tried that.

 

90% of the time sluggish response or poor idle after messing with a battery is crud in the throttle body. The computer learns and adapts to the added gunk. Clean it (even if you’ve done it a year ago, they can get gummed up quick)