Starting motor question

[ward 57]

That ground is very important and mentioned many times in the technical bulletins. However the ground originally was a stranded and insulated cable and not the braided type used in later years.

[DynoDan’55]

Well I guess the older one gets the more we forget the obvious. After all the extensive testing, I headed the recent advice and cleaned the negative batter post and cable and of course the car immediately started.
Thanks to all for the comments and advice!

Apply dielectric grease or terminal protector to the battery post. It will really help. If you take a lot of short trips your battery will stay undercharged promoting corrosion.

Controversial, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence re: the benefits of pos. grd. wiring. Never even a hint of (bare) battery post/cable corrosion in over 25 yrs. of ownership.

[Rusty57]

The fact that the negative post and terminal was overheating could be caused by one other variable.

The positive and negative posts on a battery both have a 1:9 taper. The key difference is that the top of the positive post is 17.5 mm (about 11/16”) in diameter. The negative post is smaller as 15.9 mm (5/8”) in diameter.

Appropriately there are 2 sizes of battery terminal clamps to fit these 2 different size posts.

The problem is that most “will fit” battery cables use a “one size fits all” solution. The polarity is labeled as “universal”. This means that they hope that the battery terminal clamp will deform enough to properly fit the negative post. Most of the time it will work.

If you search you can find true negative post battery cables. You will know that someone used one of those on the positive post when you see a terminal that the clamp bolt will barely fit through.