Negative terminal for battery maintainer

yes, a random bolt is fine. make sure it is a clean solid connection.

 

It would be best to make a permanent connection on the battery itself. Plug left out in the back to plug the charger into. You can close the back hatch on the power cord.

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First, where are you connecting the positive cable, at the back with the battery, or in the engine bay, say at the fuse box? I've done the latter, intalling the quick-connect cable (that came with my CTEK charger) and my connections are as follows:

For the positive, I connected where the 12 volt is supplied to the (under the hood) fuse box. It's a little tricky to get to; @NutzAboutBolts has a video on accessing it:

Then for the negative cable, I noticed nearby atop the front/left rear well there was a threaded hole with nothing, used that:


You’ll need to scrounge up a bolt: it’s the common metric 10mm (socket size) bolt size. Thread diameter is maybe 6mm?

 

6mm x 1.0 pitch. Maybe something 15-20 mm long.

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That bolt in my pic was more’n likely picked up by one of our kids, 35~40 years ago, when we were window shopping in a new car lot on a Sunday (shut down). I noticed a lot of such bolts scattered around the lot, set my kids to reaping them.

 

No good reason to go directly to the battery with a tender that at most puts out maybe 2 amps.
The same good ground bolt that you would use for a "jump point" will be fine.

BUT.....you probably should get the 12 V battery tested after it is fully charged because your extended down time might have "killed" it.
The next time it fails might be very inconvenient.