Fizzy Battery

[Longboarder]

Changed daughters battery on her Pug 106 because it had unexpectedly gone flat. Stuck it on charge overnight and went into the garage to check it 24 hours later. Surprised to find I couldn't breath in the garage, charger was running at 8 amps and the battery was hot and bubbling merrily.

I don't think the charger is duff. It medium cost, old and usually runs down the amps as the battery tops up till it stays on trickle. I think it's the battery, probably related to the fault that caused it to go flat.

Any ideas? And do I have to spray the garage, benches, tools and car with soda bic solution to stop them all dissolving.

 

Nigel

[chris n]

Hi Nigel,

The battery has a dead cell by the sounds of it, best to get a new one than waste time trying to charge it up

 

Chris

[Guest woolly]

sounds like its been new to long.

i would be tempted to clean anything of value funny stuff that gas.

 

opps hope the car was not in there.

[miikae]

Bicarbonate of soda solution should neutralise the acid residue, i used to use it a lot for cleaning up fork truck acid spills.

 

Mike

[fry61]

Isn't the gas just hydrogen? So only need to clean where liquid fizz likely to reach.

[Guest The Modfather]

I would recommend a battery cycler, like the Datatool charger/cycler, about £40. I have two but one is from Heine Gerricke (motor bike shop) and this has a full digital readout down to .1 of an amp. I had a dead caravan battery and put it on the digital one and it took 4 days to get it back to 12v but I know it didn't fry the battery whilst charging it. It dumps up to 20amp in for 5 secs and then drops down to 1-3amps for about half hour, then pumps in another 20amps. When the battery reached 5v it lowered the dump to around 17amp every half hour.

As the volts rise, the amps drop. I cannot rate them more. I will be splicing in the charging plug in the car loom rather than have to remove the bonnet to put the croc clips on every time. I have the motorbike wired up with a permanent plug and just plug it in every time I return home. Tip top battery always!