Battery explosion

[spixican07]

So I was driving down the road and my engine sounded...funny. I pulled over and had battery acid sprayed everywhere under my hood!

Background story:
Past few days my battery has been dying. It's died three times, to be precise. I hadn't had a chance to do anything about it other than get a jump. Holiday season, you know.

I have a four month old 100 amp alternator (externally regulated) that I just hooked up this summer, but it's worked fine until now. Could the alternator have popped my battery?

The voltage regulator is new and was checked as recently as August when the alternator got replaced.

Where do I start? And what's a good way to remove corrosion gunk and scarring from...everything under my hood?

 

[Master Chief]

First thing is to neutralize the battery acid on your rig:
Get into some old clothes which you don't want anymore, mix 1 pound of baking soda to 1 gallon of water, stirring until the baking soda is disolved then put the solution into a spray bottle and spray EVERYTHING with it under the hood, wheelwell, suspension, underbody...you name it, spray it or you will have corrosion in the very near future.
Your gonna have to spend a bit of the holiday cash on your Bronco, get a brand new battery and have your charging system checked out by a qualified technician.
Good luck with it,
Senior Chief

 

[RRRAAAYYY2]

Chief is dead on about the baking soda, you need to do it right away.

As for causes, they explode when too much amperage is going into or out of them, especially if they are frozen. That shouldnt be the case with yours. A guess would be your battery was bad, and your alternator was pumping it hard and the voltage was up, this would cause the battery to gas a lot, then I think you had a loose connection on one of the terminals which sparked. This would ignite the gas, causing explosion.

There are other possiblities, but that is most likely what happened. As Chief said, new battery, with very clean terminals on your cables, then get a qualified tech tech to check it over.

I would also have some baking soda around when you install the battery, and make sure your are wearing safety glasses. I will repeat that, make sure you are wearing safety glasses.

 

[blubuckaroo]

Over charging the battery creates hydrogen gas to build up. Then any loose connection or spark can set it off. Good thing you weren't in the way! Could have been a lot worse.

 

[JohnJohn]

I have had car batteries blow up on me before. Just be glad it did not happen while you were looking under the hood. (this happened to my father in-law and knocked him out but he was OK after an ambulance trip to the hospital.)

Get an Optima or Gel type of battery. I could be wrong but I don't think they are as prone to blow up like the liquid ones.

 

[spixican07]

The voltage regulator was showing full field to the battery at 17 v. I guess the battery just took on more juice than it could handle.

The reason the engine felt funny was the battery acid ate through the boots around the spark plugs and they were arcing to the headers. I was running on six cylinders.

New battery, new voltage regulator and I should be good to go. The only really sad thing is that everywhere the acid touched has corrosion / stains now. The acid turned the silver paint on my intake manifold a nasty black and put pits into the ceramic coating on my headers.

It was only a matter of time before my clean new engine compartment got messed up, but seeing it happen so soon makes me really, really sad.

 

[spixican07]

I just got the truck back the other day and I now have oil seeping from two of the bolts on my valve cover. I know for a fact that these weren't leaking before the battery incident, but it doesn't look to me like any acid or anything got on them.

Mechanic says he didn't take the valve cover off and suggested a little silicone on the bolts themselves if snugging them up didn't work.

I don't really believe in spontaneous leaks from two bolts on the same side. Is it possible the acid ate away the seal or should I stop taking my truck to that mechanic?

 

[RRRAAAYYY2]

Acid probably isnt the cause.

 

[Dave]

Acid probably isnt the cause.

Yea! That's what Timothy Leary said!;D