Today is one of those days where I wish every living creature on the planet would go fuck themselves. From a bunch of petulant immature fucks scattered throughout the country, black women who don’t know how to drive, the Atlanta Braves, all the way to people who manufacture side-terminal car batteries.
Seriously, is there anything stupider on the planet than side-terminal car batteries? I had an episode today, where I was tasked with switching out a battery of a Chrysler Sebring. No big deal, I’ve swapped batteries on a variety of vehicles in my lifetime before, it’s pretty easy, to be perfectly honest. That is until I realized that the only replacement battery I could find were side-terminals, despite the fact that the car’s previous battery was top-terminal, like most normal cars have. But leave it to Wal-Mart to have nothing but side-terminal batteries, for some reason.
Long story short, the side-terminal battery didn’t work, because one, it doesn’t come with nodes, so nodes had to be purchased. Then it turns out that the existing battery wires were barely long enough to work, but would require a great deal of creative finagling, in order to get the connectors to attach to the nodes. Then it turns out that throughout the last decades, nodes have gotten ever so slightly smaller, so they simply did not fit, even when screwed all the way. And then the kicker, being a side-terminal battery, the metal nodes come in contact with the metal fucking body of the car, leading to a blast of sparks that could have been a tad shocking, if I were a little unluckier. Needless to say, the battery did not get replaced, and I will have to try again if/when I can locate a normal top-terminal car battery.
Looking into the history of the side-terminal, it’s revealed that it’s commonplace with General Motors. Suddenly the association with Wal-Mart seems a whole lot clearer, since GM and Wal-Mart are bastions of the ‘MERICAN WAY. The general consensus on my initial research shows that 80% of people hate side-terminal batteries as much I suddenly do. The other 20% are GM owners that actually have internet access; number of teeth, left for speculation. But the biggest defense of side-terminals is that water, dirt and debris can’t get onto the terminal as easy as it can on a top-terminal. Let me clarify one thing – all cars have this thing called “a hood” that prevents the same thing from happening, too.
Anyway, I am in a foul fucking mood as a result of a day like today, and I will do due diligence and try and sleep this shit off now. Fuck side-terminal car batteries. They’re fucking retarded.
