That about sums it up. As the UIM leak turns the corner to catastrophic, I get thrown another curveball. I go to start the car, and I am met with the 'everything just goes dead' response. Let off the key, and the car begins to slowly come back to life, with all the sounds of electronics freaking out due to low voltage. After messing with it, taking the battery to autozone, and the battery testing good, I call in the tow. As I am on hold while they are dispatching the tow, the car starts right up as if nothing was wrong. Cancel the tow, and take it to another autozone, to do a full charging system test, only for it to happen again. This time they tested side posts on the battery (they did the top posts last time) and the battery failed. Take it out of the car, they test it on the side posts again, and it fails. Perfect, as I was thinking I would have to fight a corrosion and troubleshoot at this point. I was on year 3.5 of 3 year free replacement, so they prorated it.

You can skip to here for the question:

What would cause a battery to work properly one one set of terminals, and not the other? What can be done to prevent this from happening again?

On a side note, $70 later, and one of these guys is sitting in the car:
http://www.autozone.com/autozone/par..._176359_11966_

The starter fires off like it is hopped up on steroids now, and I am ecstatic that I get to keep dual terminals. It makes jump starting so much easier for me.

Whoever installed it my have overtorqued the terminal, eventually causing it to break free inside. The battery is okay, the terminal might have failed.

Just guessing of course.

thats what i would guess as well. your area'* heat has got to play havoc on the life of your battery. it would be good justification to get something better with a better warranty like the good interstate.

Good information, as I was the one who installed it.

And this is a very rough environment for batteries as mentioned, summer can land us in the neighborhood of 110*, and last winter put us at -2*. All of which the battery handled without skipping a beat.

It was mentioned that it would be a shame if the battery 'failed' just inside the warranty period.

Everything fails just after warrantty..ive busted side terminals before as well..

im wondering what happened to the paint on that rear quarterpanel :o

Looks like something chipped into the CC a few times and it began to flake away.

1000grit, wet sand away, mask off, recoat. Done.

Actually it is a former repair. Crappy paint, and they shot clear coat right over pin stripes. Sun baked it, and that is where the clear coat started to come up. On the quarter panel and back door. Also why there is no badge back there I suspect.

Even the filler is starting to crack back there.