Leaderboard

probably not the terminals, but the cable itself.. best option is to replace the entire cable - that changes the terminals as well

agree with Heartless. even if not "broken", corrosion can seep back up along the cable. replace cable.

Step 1: Install car lift

wheres the pics TTIUWOP LOL!

I agree, they are far from military spec, but they work well and are beefy compared to the standard stuff. I run them on my Xterra and have an amp, light bar, and winch hooked up to one terminal. It's all clean and there are never power issues.

Based on the description and comments, I'd say "MIL SPEC my @ss" (like Ford trucks and their "military grade aluminum" - humph). But they do look a little chunkier and more robust than the usual. But yeah, most of the above suggestions cover it. There's a very short high-current path between battery and starter and not that many parts to go wrong. If it isn't the battery, it may be the starter (or just the solenoid), or a bad termination/connection between. With a fully-charged new battery, do you see any voltage drop (at the battery) when you attempt cranking? And do you see +12 at the starter's control input (from the starter relay) when you try to crank?

So, with the engine in my shop, I looked at the bell housing and had an idea. I grabbed a Volkswagen engine stand (we build air cooled VW engines at our shop), and held it up to the EA61. Lo and behold, it bolts right up! The EA61 bell housing has the same (or very very similar) dimensions as the old air cooled flat four VW. So, I got it all set up and started stripping it down. The oil was definitely 45+ years old, I can still smell these pictures. After pulling the heads, I was pleasantly surprised to see everything was very gross, but in very serviceable shape. The one cylinder that was stuck doesn't have any pits in the cylinder wall, the piston was in poor shape however (more on that later) Bonus picture of the car after a few rain storms, it is really in good shape overall. The rear most piston pins were tough to pull, and I don't have any factory tools, so I came up with this little trick. I'd already removed the pistons by the time I took these pictures, so imagine the piston is still in there. I snuck a narrow 8mm thread nut between the piston and the rear of the block with a magnet, then I screwed a long threaded rod into it (this happens to be a head stud from a VW engine). I threaded the rod into a slide hammer, and gently hammered the pins out. After everything was removed, I was left with these super filthy coolant passages to deal with. Here's the pile of parts after pulling the whole top end. I made sure to keep the liner shims with their corresponding liners, since replacements look to be IMPOSSIBLE to find.