A little searching on Google lead us to SDHQ Offroad in Phoenix AZ. SDHQ has a lot of cool offroad parts for Toyotas and the Tundra and they make a super nice billet heavy-duty billet battery terminal kit. They told us that breaking the terminals in off-road use is a common Toyota thing so they developed these heavy-duty terminals to fix the issue.
The terminals themselves are stout! They are machined from 6061 billet aluminum. That is not going to break! New steel OEM terminals fatigue and snap, old fashioned lead terminals stretch and get loose, and old style zinc terminals corrode and fail. These aircraft aluminum parts will not! The SDHQ terminals offer a large cross-section for minimal electrical resistance too. The hardware for the terminals is all noncorroding stainless steel as well.
The terminal have provisions for the OEM cables and for four additional power and two extra ground takeoffs. This is good for offroad use where you have lights and if you have an audio system. We used our terminals for our aftermarket radio and our intercooler coolant pump.
The SDHQ kit comes with a handy large gauge eyelet in case you need to repair a corroded or broken OEM eyelet. Some shrink tubing is also provided to repair any insulation that needs to be restored when changing a terminal.
Some anti-seize is also provided for the stainless hardware.
Here is the positive terminal all hooked up to our Optima yellow top deep cycle battery. The intercooler coolant pump and the sound system are hooked up to the back of the SDHQ terminal. We are pretty confident that this is never going to fail and if we add some off-road lights later we can cleanly tap into the terminal for power.
11 comments
I wonder how these compare to what the car audio guys have been doing for the past 3+ decades? Battery terminals, cast or milled from blocks of metal for car audio uses are a dime a dozen.
Gold plated, silver, whatever; with a plethora of connection options from set screws, terminals, additional posts, etc.
While not as pretty as billet you can also get Military Ordnance “milspsec” terminals from Napa for – $12 that are stout and have another through bolt for mounting more power leads. Handy for a trail fix since Napa’s are in a lot of rural areas (at least here in the southeast). You can also get boots for them, I like the idea of covered terminals on an off road rig that might see sheet metal bashed down or a broken battery mount making it bounce around.
Nice, do you have a pic?
Not sure if this will embed, been awhile.
Nope… Let’s try this. My old supercharged xterra with winch, on board air and aux fuse block on the battery.
https://i.ibb.co/qWW2hRG/IMG-00000224.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/6YQ0m2N/IMG-20130920-145103.jpg
That’s a lot less likely to break than the cheap OEM steel part.
This part from Napa? Part #: PHI 8618
Looks nice and stout for only $10! I feel like this is what cars had in the 80’s and older! Crazy the amount of cost savings that can be had in manufacturing over the years…
Yea that’s one of them, they have 2 versions for the + and – markings. I think you can also get lead alloy or zinc alloy versions. I really hate those thin strap ones they use on cars these days,
This was my setup on my old xterra. Winch, on board air, aux fuse block wiring added.
https://i.ibb.co/qWW2hRG/IMG-00000224.jpg
Planned obsalecence was invented in the 1950’s, it’s all buyer beware, now. The moral of the story is to always upgrade your OEM equipment, especially if you are going to use it ‘offroad.’
Your battery? Moving around? At all? Why is this article not about a billet holddown/battery tray instead if that’s the root issue that caused these to break?
(Ignore my previous comment, i was so shocked by the terminals being the only thing mentioned in the first 2 pages i forgot to read the last one)