Battery Terminal Meltdown

First the good news. I have my headlights and turn signals working now. These were failing due to an disconnected grounding wire which use to connect to the ICE. I also have insurance and tags on my truck now so I have been taking it around town for some test runs.

Now the bad news. In one of my recent drives the traction pack failed and I coasted to a nearby parking lot. I don't have any meters yet so I initially thought my pack had been completely depleted but when I checked the front four batteries they still had juice. Unfortunately I don't have my lift bed working yet so it took me a bit of time to get the bed off to expose the rear batteries. Once the bed was off the problem was obvious. One of my battery terminals melted where the wire meets the post. I bypassed the problematic battery and drove the truck home. Here are some pics of the meltdown.


I researched what different battery terminal types are good for EVs prior to selecting these batteries and didn't see anything about staying away from low profile threaded terminals. I did see some posts saying the automotive style posts are the best but my battery provider didn't have this specific battery with that post available. I am hoping that this meltdown was caused by user error on my end around not having the bolt tight enough on the terminal and not an error in my judgment on the style of post I used. We will see if I have future failures then the latter might be true.

The battery doesn't seem to be ruined as it still tests good voltage. I am planning on tapping a new threaded bolt into the remaining post and putting it back into service.