KaBOOOOM---and the M1009 is dead

[YellowHammer]

Well, until I get back there this morning with new batteries. I get in last night after a cookout at the in-laws and as I initiate the starter I hear an immediate blast that was equivalent to a .50 cal pop. The truck goes dead at this point and I'm wondering what in the world happened.

I just finished installing my a/c in it a few days back and all I could think was that something went wrong there, but I knew better. Anyway, I pop the hood and I immediately see that the front battery has the top blown off and the smell of battery acid was intense. I got a hose and rinsed the acid off of everything, then got my wife to ride me home. Good thing we were in 2 vehicles.

We're about to go get some batteries shortly. I'm thinking I'll spend a little extra and get the Optima's. I'd never had a battery explode before last night. But I don't care to experience it again. Dry cell seems pretty attractive over having a hydrogen bomb under my hood.

I'll take a few pics and update the thread later this afternoon.

 

[cornrichard]

Dump a ton of baking soda on everything under the hood and then mist it with water. Let that sit for a while and then rinse again. Every piece of aluminum under the hood will look like **** if you don't. It will prob. eat up those nice new aluminum lines on you ac. kit also.

 

[143SE8]

I had one blow up in a Dodge Dakota several years ago. The truck was just sitting and had not been run for several hours. It dented the hood. Scary! Jim

 

[bryan70546]

""then got my wife to ride me home"

 

[Snarky]

Dump a ton of baking soda on everything under the hood and then mist it with water. Let that sit for a while and then rinse again. Every piece of aluminum under the hood will look like **** if you don't. It will prob. eat up those nice new aluminum lines on you ac. kit also.

Ditto. The baking soda neutralizes the acid residue into salt, CO2 and water. After you neutralize the acid with baking soda, rinse the leftover baking soda and newly formed salt off real well because it causes the oxidation of iron/steel to accelerate. The foaming white stuff is the salt, the gas causing it to foam is the CO2.


There is a better way to get rid of large amounts of acid from a battery than baking soda:

Battery acid is a relatively diluted Sulfuric acid, the best way to get rid larger quanitities of it is actually to use diluted Sodium Hydroxide which is a drain cleaner sold at plumbing or hardware stores as caustic soda. Dilute caustic soda with water and spray it on acid or pour the battery into the diluted solution create sodium sulfate which you can safely dump down the sink without harming the pipes or environment, you can use Ph strips from the pool section of a hardware store or fish section of a pet store to test when it is neutralized. You're looking for a Ph of 7. lower is too acidic higher is too basic.


Warnings:
Sodium Hydroxide is corrosive like the acid, you probably don't want to spray it on your truck, just on your battery.

Do not use draino as it has aluminum in it, which it reacts with the acid to produce hydrogen which is what exploded previously. Also iron(rust)+aluminum+heat (from the neutralization reaction) = possibly a thermite reaction, which would be cool, but may also mess up your A/C system.

Also, although bleach is a great base, and can easily neutralize sulfuric acid. It is a poor choice for this application as one of the products released in the reaction is Chlorine gas, which is a green misty gas that will burn your lungs, and possibly kill you.

 

[digitaldust]

I was going to let that one slide

 

[boomer]

""then got my wife to ride me home"

I caught that too. I'm wondering - what's that about..........

 

[2deuce]

Do we want pics?

 

[frodobaggins]

I caught that too. I'm wondering - what's that about..........

If my truck almost blew up, it's the least she could do

 

[davo727]

I had a battery blow up under the seat of a golf cart I was driving- that sucked!

 

[ryan77]

How does a battery just blow up?????

 

[davo727]

They give off a bunch of hydrogen gas and occasionally internal damage causes a short and spark and boom

 

[YellowHammer]

Sorry it took me so long. I didn't get around to it until this evening. And for those who found humor in the reference about my wife riding me. All I'll say is; if you only knew.

 

[2deuce]

I'd look into the warranty. Not just the battery but the damage it caused. May be a dead end but I'd check especially if I had acid damage to the truck.

 

[Stan Leschert]

I have a dumb question.
What was the source of the spark, that caused your batteries to volcano?
This might be worth looking in to.

If not, just post new pics of the next incident.

 

[Stihl029]

The optima's over the past few years have gone down as far as quality is concerned.

If you are looking into a higher performing battery check out the other AGM batteries like the ones Carquest has. NG31 is the P/N IIRC for group 31's and they come with the 3/8 stud so you can reterminate to tin coated brass eyes and ditch the lead terminals(no more corrosion or funky green stuff). I cannot say enough about the AGM's I am sold on them over everything else I have used up here in Alaska. Last winter I wasn't even running group 31's and they were more than enough. same size ones that a jeep would use, they do not off gas and I have also put them under heavy drains when I killed an alternator and they seem to be unaffected. they cost around 200 a pop but you get what you pay for there too. well that's my

Have a good one.

 

[antennaclimber]

I agree with Stihl029.
Optima quality is not what it used to be.

 

[ryan77]

It seems nothing has the same quality as it used to..........

 

[reloader64]

Stan,
I've seen 2 batteries blow up. On one, a guy was attaching jumper cables, and the spark ignited the hydrogen gas. Luckily for him, the side blew out. Had the top blown, it would have gone straight into his face, as he was leaning over the battery. This is why it is recommended that the final connection be made to a ground point somewhere other than the battery. The second time, I was at a convenience store. A lady walked out, got in her car, and BOOM. I recognized the sound, and we washed her engine compartment down with water. I have no idea what initiated the explosion. I can only assume it was something internal. Either way, it's scary when it happens.

 

[Dodge man]

There is a better way to get rid of large amounts of acid from a battery than baking soda:

Battery acid is a relatively diluted Sulfuric acid, the best way to get rid larger quanitities of it is actually to use diluted Sodium Hydroxide which is a drain cleaner sold at plumbing or hardware stores as caustic soda.

NO NO NO! Don't even think about using sodium Hydroxide! That stuff eats aluminium ten times faster than any acid ever created! Even a BRIEF exposure will ruin the finish on any aluminium on your engine!! Use baking soda, it won't harm aluminium. People think it's less powerful but it takes EXACTLY one molecule of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or one molecule of lye (sodium hydroxide) to neutralize one molecule of sulfuric acid.

Sodium Hydroxide will also react with aluminium to form hydrogen gas which as you just found out is highly explosive!

Here's a story for you that I read when I was a kid. Prior to WW II when Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers were operating in China, they would recover the aluminium from crashed aircraft and the peasants would sit there and file it down to make aluminium powder. When they wanted to launch a weather balloon, they would drop the aluminium power into lye (sodium hydroxide) and water solution extracted from wood ashes and collect the hydrogen gas that was given off and use it to fill their balloons.

Naturally being a kid that liked to see thing go BOOM, I used that information to make my own hydrogen filled balloons but I also tied a piece of homemade fuse them and lit it before releasing them! Some of our balloons were 5 foot long and over a foot in diameter. When the fuse ignited the hydrogen gas, everybody in town heard the results and car alarms went off for miles in all directions!

But back to your battery. I'm sure by now that you realize that a spark ignited the hydrogen gas that had collected in your battery and the resulting explosion is what wrecked your battery. A LOT of the current crop of batteries have been having problems with internal shorts. (Discount Auto Parts batteries are THE worst IMO!) If they happen below the electrolyte then all that happens is it kills your battery but if it happens above it and their is any hydrogen collected there then things go BOOM! Actually it's even worse because when you charge a battery it breaks down the water in it to Hydrogen and Oxygen, so you have a ready made bomb sitting there if those gasses aren't sufficiently vented.

As I said, this problem has gotten MUCH worse in the last couple of years. I've worked on cars and cars for almost fifty years and I'd heard of batteries exploding but had never seen it happen but I've had it happen to me personally TWICE in the last couple of years and I know of many other cases of it happening recently. In fact, it just happened to a friend of mine's truck and it bowed the hood up almost two feet in the middle and ruptured the fuel lines and set the truck on fire! It was a total loss. When the FD got the fire out, they called the Fire Marshall and he investigated. The FD had to cut the hood open but once under the hood, it was obvious that one of his batteries had exploded. And it went off like a grenade! Everything for two feet around that battery was destroyed!

BTW the Optima and other fancy batteries are NOT dry cells! They're still Lead Acid batteries, they just use an immobilized electrolyte (still Sulfuric acid and water) instead of a flooded cell! I'll leave it up to you to research the difference. I doubt your truck could even carry a dry cell large enough to provide enough current to start the engine!