Cleaning Corroded Motorcycle Battery Terminal

This article shows you how to clean corroded motorcycle battery terminals. The same technique can be used for all lead-acid batteries including car batteries, RV batteries, boat batteries, jet ski batteries, UPS backup batteries and so on.

Here we show you an older cycle-tron Interstate motorcycle battery that has visibly corroded terminals. Cleaning is rather simple it just requires some baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), water, wire brush or toothbrush and some of your own elbow grease (time and effort).

Simple Cleaning Tools

In our example we use a product called Quick Battery Cleaner. It is essentially a foaming agent with sodium bicarbonate so you don’t have to mix baking soda with water.

Be sure to wear old clothing, protective gloves and goggles.

If your battery is installed on your motorcycle, you will want to remove the cables by first removing the negative cable and then the positive cable. When putting the cables back on, use the reverse order (positive cable on first, then negative cable).

We spray the foaming agent on the battery terminals and let it react with the acid. If the corrosion is more severe you will want to use a wire brush tool to gently scrub the terminals.

Use a paper towel to wipe off the residue until the surface is clean of all corrosion. It may take several applications of the cleaning agent along with scrubbing efforts on your part to clean heavily corroded battery terminals.

Make sure the terminals are completely dry before reinstalling the battery on your motorcycle and connecting the cables.

TIP

It is important to inspect your Motorcycle battery routinely for any corrosion or damage to the battery such as cracking from freezing weather.

Battery terminals will sometimes corrode because of the nature of the chemistry reaction occurring between cathodes and anodes. Corrosion will affect the current flow to and from the battery and it may reduce your battery life.