I found out that my original battery is supposed to be "side terminals"! In a '74?? I found it on that plate thing that lists all the stuff on the truck. I would have assumed a '74 would have been old enough to still have top terminals on the battery, but no there it was. No matter I use a top post and probably always will.
Also, I have several things that need wires attached to the ground post coming from various things, like my MSD Remote Timing Control, tach, and the ground wire for the head lights, and the extra ground for the chassis are all attached to the negative post of the battery by way of ring terminal ends on each wire.
What I've done was drill a hole in the top of the post and run a self tapping screw into the hole. Then if it's not a closed ring wire end it's a split terminal wire end so all I have to do is unscrew the screw a little bit and slip the terminal end onto the screw and then tighten the screw down against all the ring and split terminals. Then I remove the screw and move all the small wires aside and loosen the battery terminal and wiggle it off the post if I'm taking the battery out or working on the truck and need the cables off of it.
I would suggest making a bus bar for your ground needs that has one connection to the battery snd then various points you can hook a ring terminal or whatever you have without having to funk with the post
you could use a trailer wiring box
or you could use any number of aftermarket or Oe stuff.
Also, gm invented the side post in the early 70s and really ******* stuck to those guns all the way to now like they are afraid to admit it wasn’t inherently better or something
The idea is the sheathing on the posts is fully encapsulated and the only part exposed to air is the screw. Well, we all know exactly how well that system worked out and exactly how little extra cable length gm gave and how little we like the design because in my experience it’s still corrodes just like a top post BUT YOU CANT SEE IT abd it’s also harder to clean unless you remove all the rubber from the equation then it wouldn’t work right. Sometimes the double stack on the positives just never want to cooperate.
oh and it’s so ******* easy to strip lead threads with a lead screw and sometimes it’s because the screw has so little engagement from factory once it’s in the cable opening that it’s essentially going to pull the threads OUT and functionally give you a harder to reach starting point as far as thread engagement.
Quick fix for factory cables? Cut the rubber and the bs off the end, grind down the high spots(or flatten on a small anvil or something), and you have essentially a large ring terminal you can screw down on a marine terminal for your favorite top post battery to go in.
**** the side posts
I literally did the first mod to my park avenue when I bought it even before balancing the tires(they were shaky), was convert the car to top post and then install a top post battery. I did that while it was in the stall waiting to get tires balanced. I technically broke a rule because “we couldn’t work on our own cars” presumably so we couldn’t **** it up and then have the company dish out or something but I didn’t care I was leaving days later lol
tht car had a easy to convert system tho, the battery cables were two piece design that had a insulated box on top the battery where it was lug to lug with a short 10 inch long cable with the side post. Since it was on top of battery I just put marine terminals 2 inches forward where it was connect from factory and threw away the side post lol
