Has anyone ever heard that using them is a NO NO?

What is the problem using wing nuts on battery connections?

Sorry in advance if this is a low level subject but I had never heard of this until recently.

Most folks consider it a No-No because in many cases they may not be tightened sufficiently, causing loose connections which gives a myriad of motor and electronics problems. That said, in the past I have used them without any problems BUT I always used a pair of pliers to tighten them; NEVER hand-tightening! If you use pliers on them PLUS put a split-lock washer under them, you can achieve a reliable connection.

C.

Mercury says it's a no no because the computer controlled motors need all the avalailable voltage without interuption. It can make the ecm/pcm go crazy and cause intermmittant performance issues. Most fault codes retrieved from the ecm are for low voltage.

jusst don,t use lock nuts with the plastic.. they will gauld and then you cnanot get them off . use a nut with a lockwasher and tighten.

Thanks for the feedback, I figured it was a materials and or a corrosive issue being that most wing nuts would probably be made of cheep materials made from china and would be subject to corrosion. I have been useing stainless steel wings for years and never had a problem. As stated above I just tighten them up good with a wing nut socket.

The latest big motors such as the ETECS took a bit of a design shortcut and put the big heavy current power-handling electronics (such as the voltage regulators charging the battery) on the very same assembly as the low-power sensitve signal/control/computer data circuits. A momentary loose battery connection can cause the $5 voltage reg. to fail or throw a surge on the poorly regulated supplies, costing you an entire electronics board (EMM) and hundreds of dollars.

These boards are sealed and are not set for repair even for the simpler failure prone parts .

Say no to wingnuts, even if tightened by a wrench, they tend not to be very reliable.

No wing nuts.

I really think the problem was not the wing nuts, its a matter of keeping the terminals clean and the big nuts that were trying to tighten them by hand. Regular nuts will make them use a wrench. Interstate started supplying their batteries with nuts, instead of wing nuts, last year.