KABOOM..!!!

4getgto

4getgto

Bill from Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Member
This is what a battery looks like when it explodes.
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This happened about a week ago. Just touched the starter button on my Yanmar when it went. Sounded like a 12ga shot gun going off in the garage. Fortunately I had the hood down and no major damage to the tractor. Though I can't say that about my ears. Still have some ringing in them.
Found no wiring shorts that could have caused it and came to the conclusion that the battery must have shorted out internally. Never in all my years of messing with batteries have I ever witnessed this and don't want to again.!!!!
 
KennyP said:
Wow! Glad the hood was closed! Hope you got things cleaned up there!
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Yea I rinsed everything down with water right away.

This was a 5 year old battery. And after looking and looking for a problem and not being able to put my finger on anything it was a little scary putting everything back together and not knowing what to expect the first time you hit the switch..!
 
I had one blow on a 1958 JD 720D years ago, a thin shield wore loose & dropped on one of the four 6V batteries under the seat. The next wash day Mom wanted to know what I got into with my jeans, bottoms of the legs were shredded where the acid had splashed on them!
 
That's frightening. I've never heard of one spontaneously exploding. Long ago a friend of mine accidentally shorted a car battery and it exploded. He was very lucky he didn't loose his sight. I think about that every time I hook up jumper cables.

Stonebreaker's theory seems plausible. Probably did spark at the terminal connection.
 
I did that once on a 77 maverick I was helping a buddy swap out an engine on. Straight 6, we weren't getting a good ground after the engine swap. I had the battery charger connected on boost and loosened up the ground cable at the engine side, went to tighten it up again and slid off with the wrench it landed right between the hot post and the thermostat housing and kaboom.....

Another time several years later I had to deliver some tires from my work to a local car stealership and went outside to get the shop truck, got in, hit the key and heard a light little "puh", then nothing. Opened the hood and saw the battery split wide open. And frozen. We always put it inside over nite, parked it outside when we opened up that morning, it had sat out about 6 hours when I went to use it.
 
When I was about 4 years old I saw a tractor battery explode right in my dads face. He was jump-starting the Ford tractor off his '65 Chevy pickup. Guess Ford and Chevy don't get along. :cool: He got the full whammy up close and personal. Dad started screaming for someone to take him to the house to flush his face. My older brother sprang into action, grabbed him by the hand, and took him into the bath tub. We were on well water then so no outside hydrant. Once he flushed as best he could, mom lead-footed him to the ER in her '66 Chevelle. I remember him wearing dark glasses for a few days and having many small cuts/scabs all over his face and neck from the shrapnel of the battery case.
Long about winter of '89-'90 dad and I were working in our shop pulling an engine we had sold. We ran a salvage yard at the time. I was under the car removing bolts and dad was topside. Just getting started, he was removing the battery and shorted out the posts. The battery blew and rained acid all down on me. Knowing immediately what had happened I closed my eyes and made darn sure to keep them closed. He grabbed my legs and yanked me out from under the car. He asked if any acid got in my eyes. I told him I was sure none had. Then I asked him if he "got it good". He said no, I didn't get any in the face. In the dead of winter, I had on insulated coveralls. Too cold for an outside bath, he took my coveralls off at the back door of the house and lead me into that very same bathtub and helped me strip off. Of course we had a shower by then and on rural water. With a long rinse I was OK and didn't even need a trip to the ER. My coveralls didn't fare so well.
I think about those explosions every time I hook up jumper cables.
 
In the military I've seen the effects from some big ones going. Almost all military vehicles have a special "slave" terminal on them for jump starting and we had special cables that worked with them, everything is 24 volts. I've seen about half a dozen batteries that were frozen and people tried to jump start the vehicle without checking the batteries first. A frozen 1400 CCA grader battery makes a pretty good BOOM! when some idiot tried jump starting the grader
 
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JDJake said:
In the military I've seen the effects from some big ones going. Almost all military vehicles have a special "slave" terminal on them for jump starting and we had special cables that worked with them, everything is 24 volts. I've seen about half a dozen batteries that were frozen and people tried jump start the vehicle without checking the batteries first. A frozen 1400 CCA grader battery makes a pretty good BOOM! when some idiot tries jump starting grader
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Yep, I watched the batteries on an M35 duece and a hlaf blow off half the right side of the truck! A new Soldier thought it would be funny to crosswire a set of slave cables, which were then used to jump the duece from an M109A6 Paladin self-propelled artillery piece. The explosion tore the entire sheet metal side off the cab and set the truck on fire. The truck just happened to have been dispatched by the same idiot who rigged the cable, and he wound up spending a year in the brig, convicted of negligent endangerment on 27 counts, and destruction of government property in the amount of $530,000. The short sent a charge though the Paladin's fire control computer and fried it, which is why the cost was so high.
 
My wife pulled in at the baby sitters to pick up our child. Driving a fairly new 72 Pontiac. Shut it off and went in to get child. Came back out couple of minutes later and hit the start - bang the battery blew. Battery was original from GM, less than 4 years old.

Sheenist
 
In 1968 I was working in a body shop and had just repainted the front end on a 63 chevy Impala. A nice shinny black one at that. It had been setting there for awhile so a charger had been hooked up to the battery. The manager's son ( a kid who knew everything ) was going to move it out onto the lot and I told him before removing the charger to unplug it. Next thing we heard was an exploding battery. Don't remember if he was injured but yours truly got to repaint the front of that car again.
 
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