> So, lession to the boys and me... if you smell Sulfates near a battery that
> has been charging. -Disconnect the power at the electrical panel first.
And this is exactly why it's always recommended to shut the charger off first.
A small amount of explosive hydrogen/oxygen mixture (in perfect proportion no
less) is always produced when you charge a battery; it doesn't have to be
overcharged badly enough to spray sulfuric acid into the air.
I managed a slightly different version years ago ... thought I had a bad
alternator on my daily driver Chevy so when I got home from work, I put a
charger on the battery. Lived in a bad neighborhood, so I closed the hood to
keep the charger from growing legs. Turned out the battery had a shorted cell,
so the charger overcharged the other cells. Eventually, the breaker in the
charger opened, sparking off the mixture and setting fire to the battery. Some
drunk knocked on the door and said "Hey Mister, did you know your car is smoking
?".
The entertaining part (in retrospect) was that GM, in their infinite wisdom, had
routed the hood release cable over the top of the battery, so the fire had
burned through the cable's cheap nylon sheathing, rendering it useless.
Chemical fire extinguishers don't work so well when you lay them flat under the
car, either.
But, I got the fire put out with the garden hose, and, after it had cooled,
opened the hood by jacking up the car and reaching in from underneath. Actual
damage was fairly minimal.
Randall
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