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MG MGB Technical - Cleaning treminals

I there a good way to clean the inside of the female spade terminals on various electrical connections. I am getting intermitant contact to some of my connections (as we all do) and would like to clean them well. It is very hard to scrape the inside of these?
Jimmy Chew

If you have sufficient service length in the wire, the best way is to replace the terminal. Cheers - Dave
David DuBois

I have used muriatic acid, a weak form of hydrochloric acid to clean copper and brass as well as a rust remover. This should work well for copper terminals, BUT YOU MUST NEAUTRALIZE THE ACID WITH BAKING SODA OR CORROSION WILL SURLY FOLLOW. A diluted form of muriatic acid works well to clean sterling.silver. A quick dip and the oxidation is gone.

Muriatic acid can be purchased at most hardware stores or home centers.

Frank Grimaldi

A narrow strip of wet-or-dry silicon carbide paper, maybe 320-400 grit, will do, but it's usually not necessary, as they are pretty much self cleaning IF they are tight. You can tighten them up by careful use of small pliers, IF they have not been seriously hot, In that case they will be black and have no spring left in them = replace. The worst ones are the post '70 or so, with the square plastic covers and the stupid lock tabs. That keeps the wire from falling off despite the fact that the connection sucks; the earlier ones just honestly fall off when they are loose! It is possible but a nuisance to get the plastic cover off to tighten these up, but they are also most prone to having been fatally hot. Especially on the IGN relay of later cars!!

Once they are tight, use OxGard, a special electrical grease which dissolves oxides. Wonderful stuff, use it on ALL connectors, especially the bullet ones. Found in the house wiring electrical section of hardware stores and the like.

Edit:
Acid dip works, lemon juice, vinegar, etc BUT if you dip it deep enough to get the acid in the actual wire, it will wick up the wire and you cannot neutralize it. Failure is months or years away, but it's a'comin'!
FRM
FR Millmore

Jimmy,

If you are talking about the female end of the bullet connectors, go to a gun shop or sporting goods shop and get the brass brushes that are made to clean pellet guns. I think it is a 0.177 caliber. I might have the decimal in the wrong place. Buy several because they wear out pretty quickly.

Charley
C R Huff

Don't waste your time cleaning the round sleeves, except as temporary get on the road measure. They crack from age, even if not used or exposed to evil conditions. Frequently they are already cracked when you are cleaning them. These should be VERY hard to get together or apart if not broken, especially if not lubricated with OxGard or at least vaseline/grease. Get new ones from British Wire or similar.
Most of the new ones are nickle plated steel and are not susceptible to the age cracking of spring bronze/brass, which is what the originals were.

FRM
FR Millmore

>Don't waste your time cleaning the round sleeves,

+1

It'll probably cost you $20-30 to replace every single one on the car. Then you're good to go for another 25 years....
Rob Edwards

Replacement is good advice, but if not, buy a can of electrical contact cleaner. I use this and a swab. Worked perfect on my 67 with original wiring (know there are those out there that are snickering about an original wiring harness that has not had a meltdown and is working perfectly.)
Bruce-C

This thread was discussed between 28/09/2009 and 29/09/2009

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