Hi.
Had to perform minor surgery to the factory terminals. They did not grab the battery posts firmly enough causing failure to start and perhaps poor charging.
Increased the gap that allows each terminal half to grip when the nut is tightened by sawing-in and filing about 1 mm. Seems a good action to perform.

Image borrowed from the web to show the gap:

Its conical nut design seems proper and does a good job grabbing the terminal, but decades seem to stretch it limiting how tight can it be.

 

Yeah, those things get goofy over time. I agree it's a good design but once they splay out at the bottom like in that photo the "grab factor" is diminished. The conical thing gets drawn up too far and you run out of threads before the terminal itself is clamping on the post. Usually a few minutes with some lineman's pliers will get them back into shape though. I've not had any get wrecked to the point that they can't be retooled into service.

 

I've had a couple Crack snf break, though I don't remember if they were on LR's.

 

"and" not "snf"

 

There are spacer caps available at your LPS that go over that post, spread the terminal and put it over the cap, you're now good to go.

 

ahab ---> ..."like in that photo the "grab factor" is diminished"...

No, it is the opposite: when the gap is increased as in the photo, by filing/sawing-off terminal material, the grab to the post is improved as allows tightening beyond the point of closed gap limit. The image shows the gap after firmly grabbed the post.

 

I think you misunderstood me and I definitely misunderstood you. In my experience, the nut can only go down so far on the cone piece before interference between the cone and the nut stops the nut from turning. Essentially the nut is "full of cone" and will not compress the halves any further. The issue in that pic above is the fact that the two halves are splayed out and the gap at the bottom is larger than the gap at the top. Even if you open up that gap with a file, there is no more tightening occurring because the nut is fully seated against the cone before the two halves were drawn tight. Bending the two halves of the terminal parallel again reestablishes the correct alignment and the terminal draws tight against the battery post before the nut is unable to turn any further against the cone. In other words the clamping stops the nut, not the nut jamming on the cone. I've never filed the terminal gap, and with all else equal that couldn't hurt for sure but when working properly that should only result in a larger air gap at the end. If anything, filing the top of the cone down would allow the nut to draw the halves tighter before it jams on the cone.






Edit: After thinking about this I will concede that if the lead stretched and the two halves DO meet before getting tight then filing off some material in the gap will certainly help, however that might be tough to accomplish so perhaps the spacer cap is a simpler approach. I've not seen this happen though and I've rehabbed a couple simply by straightening them out so I had a little trouble wrapping my head around it.

 

Thanks.
Did it again today to my other Disco; got excellent grab terminal-to-post after removing ~1mm meat off the terminal gap surfaces. Misunderstandings aside, eliminated the poor contact at tight nut-in. The terminals held with a vise-grip, first a hacksaw all the way into the gap, then pry open a bit the gap to fit a thin file. Am happy. Flashing M and S dissappeared.


This gap ~tripled in width by removing material, prevents the halves to hit each other before the nut can do a tight 'squeeze'

 

My advice: If you’re talking about the negative terminal, just buy a new negative cable. Two options. Genuine LR (not that expensive) and Atlantic British makes one that’s the same, and fits great. That solves your problem on the negative side of the battery. Any time I buy a new Disco this is on the initial parts ordering list.

If it’s the positive cable, no good way to replace just that section of harness, or that cable with a readily available LR part. It’s part of the harness, as I’m sure you know. You’re cutting / splicing a new terminal end on when it finally will not snug down. I have had “decent” luck with filing down the conical area, and that sort of thing but the only fix is really a new properly crimped on industrial grade terminal. Atlantic British offers this and I’ve done it once, it worked -- https://www.roverparts.com/electrica...ry/YSB108490K/

I have seen ALOT of Discos with dodgy battery terminal connections. Very common. My recommendation once it gets dodgy is replace, the repair isnt ever good

 

I dealt with this on our 2001 and here was my fix. I replaced the negative cable with the one from Atlantic British.
For the positive cable I cut the old terminal off, stripped the wire back, slide some heat shrink and then crimped on quality copper lugs using a large crimper set off of Amazon. I then attached the copper lugs to a military style terminal.
It works great, wasn’t too expensive, looks good and also provides a location to connect the positive winch lead. I can post a picture tomorrow.