...and just why would the battery explode, the alternator will cease to output after the regulator vaporises, the leads might start to glow but the battery will just discharge - as all you are doing is a (servier) load bank test - it won't do the battery much good but it's extremely unlikely to cause it to explode.
There is some utter clap-trap in this thread, most of you are clueless as to the real risks and what are very slim possibilities or 'old wives tales'...
I'm not going to bother explaining but most of you are clueless as to how to use jump leads correctly and are likely to do more damage to one or both of the cars electrical systems - leave well alone or be very afraid!
Utter claptrap that just proves how wrong you are "Jerry" In no way does this equate to a simple load test. Just get back to your plumbing counter and stop messing with things you simply do not understand.
A lot of this is irrelevant because the OP clearly indicated that battery was in the trunk of the car!
More often a car battery is mounted adjacent to the engine and usually the reason for boosting (jump starting) is that it has run down/hasn't been charged properly, cold weather etc.
In this colder climate of Eastern Canada carrying a set of cables and/or stopping to 'give somone a boost' is not that unusual.
Battery explosions are rare; but agree a lot of people do not understand the hazard of making a spark at/near the battery; either when making the initial boosting connection or after the boosted vehicle has started; due to the production of hydrogen and oxygen as the battery is being rapidly recharged! (BTW nowadays most/all North American sold cars now seem to be 12 volt negative ground).
So, unfortunately the instruction not to connect to the negative post/terminal of the battery itself is often ignored.
Better understood, but also often ignored, considering that replacing a burnt out alternator with a rebuilt can typically cost $100 (40 to 50 quid) installed, is to not run the engine of the boosting vehicle (merely use its battery to start the stalled one),
What does seem to be better understood is to disconnect the cables from the boosting vehicle first and also to connect the negative cable at the boosting vehicle to something negative such as a lift hook on the engine block etc. Thus any spark at disconnection is away from the battery vents.
I have seen a portion of a battery blow up, forunately no one was injured by flying acid but the cover of two end cells of the battery were blown right off! However there was enough 'oomph' and connection left in the battery for the owner to drive it to the nearby town to buy another battery! I guess, while doing that, fortunately the battery didn't go 'open' in which case the voltage might have gone out of sight and blown other car electrics. I think that was still back in pre-alternator days. You could tell back then that a vehicle had a weak battery; when the engine slowed down to an idle the lights would dim. Driving at speed they could be superbright!
All car alternators are inherently current limiting. The internal resistance of a car battery means they have to be so. Sticking another battery in parallel and even starting the engine in this state really makes little difference.
...and just how many lead acid batteries have you made, filled, charged and then fitted, also just how many have you fault found and then repaired?...
It's you and the other 'want-ta-be' experts who need to find a clue, or are you going to suggest that any resistance applied to a battery is going to cause it to explode....
He may well have, but asserting that lead acid batteries "can't explode" is absolute and utter clap trap, already borne out by personal experiences of two posters to this thread alone.
In the circumstances I'll add mine albeit witnessed from a distance
Many years ago I saw the remains of a truck battery very firmly embedded in the walls of a workshop. The battery was off a 7.5 tonne ex-army truck with a dozen seats that was used to transport the karts and pupils to kart club meetings. Some reworking was being done on the truck where the karts slid onto racks and the battery had been removed for better access. It had been left in the workshop storeroom for a number of weeks, well out of the way, usually under lock and key and with the terminals well protected.
One evening some renegade school karting club pupils got a bit bored waiting for their drives and wandered off through the open workshop and thought it would be a good idea to drop a steel bar across the terminals. After a few seconds it was glowing, moving from dull red to orange and with smoke and fumes pouring from the rubber casing. They changed their minds about it being a good idea at this point but nothing would move the bar, so they scarpered and merged into the crowd watching the karts. Shortly afterwards the battery had had enough and ended up in hundreds of pieces with bits flying all over the place. Despite a few 100cc karts tearing around in the playground only fifty yards away the noise of the explosion and the half dozen windows disintegrating immediately attracted everyone's attention. The cleanup cost a fortune and the kart club was closed. The perpetrators were never caught although the staff always had their suspicions (one of the teachers was a friend of my parents) About ten years later the full story came out during a beer fuelled evening before one of the perpetrators emigrated to Canada. Me? I was looking at a spark plug at the time, jumped out of my skin, dropped it and smashed it. Normally that would be time for an earful from the teacher but on this occasion they had a lot more to worry about.
The dropped jump leads shorting mentioned previously happened at a local farm a few years ago, the day was stinking hot and being bare chested the guy ended up with battery acid over his back and chunks of plastic battery casing embedded in a tender place.
A shorted jump lead is a very small step away from a solid copper bar across the terminals, but it would appear your jump leads must have safety resistors of a few Giga Ohms so they will always be unconditionally safe.
If you wish to ban all conducting materials no matter what their resistance on the grounds they might be dangerous when applied across the terminals of a lead acid battery then go ahead, i'm sure the wankers in Brussels would love to take up your cause.
I'm a don't-wannabe-an-expert with regard to lead acid batteries. It exploded. I was there. What more can I tell you?
I'd always assumed that it was an explosive mixture of hydrogen & oxygen. I still think that was the cause. I had heard elsewhere that they can explode as a result of the electrolyte boiling if you short the terminals, as per the kart story.
I have seen many batteries explode, sometimes at far to a quarter, but I have NEVER seen one explode due to merely being shorted out, especially the length of jump leads away.
tonne
karts
Sorry, but having seen larger batteries off larger vehicles than a
7.5 t lorry explode, mostly due to internal faults, you story (because that is what is, with a lot of 'padding' I suggest...) doesn't quite fit what actually happens what a battery case explodes.
Had a search on the HSE website and found a fascinating report of accidents involving fork lift trucks.
formatting link
from that report;
116. Eight (57%) of the total number of accidents/incidents investigated involved battery explosions. Four (50%) of these accidents/incidents occurred during battery charging because operatives or drivers placed or dropped metal objects on top of the batteries or a loose connection or exposed cable caused a spark that ignited hydrogen given off by the charging process. Two (25%) occurred when vehicles were being jump started. And two (25%) when trucks were being driven soon after battery charging and a loose connection caused sparks that ignited hydrogen given off by the batteries.
That's confirmed it then, lead acid batteries can explode.
Well considering that I have seen a solid bar (as use as a busbar) short out a fully charged battery you are more likely to melt the lead terminals that case an explosion. Stop your utter , ill-informed, clap trap!
I notice that you seem to have forgotten to tell us just what actual experience you have with lead acid batteries...
What was the fault with the battery, an internal break in the inter-cell connecting bars or perhaps between posts and plates? The jump leads themselves were not what caused it to exploded, any such load could have caused the same, indeed I have seen cases were a starter motor that draw a higher than normal current has caused a faulty battery to explode.
that
short
You are correct that the hydrogen / oxygen mix *can* cause a battery to explode [1], but the original story in this thread was about jump leads being shorted out away from the battery, unless there is an internal fault that causes an internal spark it's very unlikely that the short out jump lead alone would cause the explosion - otherwise a load bank test would do the same to any battery tested!
I should also add that the comments about clipping the 'grounded' end of the jump leads to the engine of the non starting car is often done not due to any possible problem with the batteries but the fact that by doing so it removes the possibility of a faulty engine earth (grounding) cable.
I'm sure there are worldwide - given the number of cars. But I've been tinkering with cars for many a year and have never had problems. Perhaps because I learned very early on to respect electricity.
Actually there was a worldwide shortage of steel that year due to the new invention of heavier than balsa aircraft and this fact, together with savage education cutbacks, meant the karts were sold off the first week of term so the school could afford chairs for the pupils to sit on.
The battery that never exploded was still in the army truck that was hundreds of miles away on a secret joint SAS Home Guard exercise on Salisbury Plain. This battery carried on working for another 5 years before it was melted down to form a new roof for the local church and a selection of fishing weights for JR Hartley.
Just before they placed the non existent steel bar on the non existent battery terminals the famous three who never existed were all abducted by aliens who took the non existent battery back to planet zog to temporarily power a new kind of combi boiler they were developing. The aliens returned to earth and for a laugh and as a lasting reminder of their visit sprayed electrolyte around the room and hammered bits of battery casing into the wall.
The non existent workshop windows were damaged by the sonic blast of the alien spacecraft leaving as they performed a triple salko round the science block (now fully equipped with chairs) so the famous three who never put a steel bar on the terminals of a battery in the first place could be deposited round the back of the bike sheds where they subsequently spent the next hour examining the literary aspects of an old copy of Mayfair while having a crafty smoke.
Due to restrictions being placed on all British citizens that have been abducted by aliens from emigrating to Canada the story never emerged on a night fuelled by beer as all the beer in the non existent pub had been used instead to fill the new explosive proof lead alcohol batteries, one of which by total coincidence had just been removed from a brand new unwanted Army truck, that, due to a sudden outbreak of worldwide peace, had been donated to a local school. The school immediately set up a kart club and modified the truck to transport karts and pupils all over the country.
Toyota meanwhile, in what would subsequently be seen as an extremely bad move, took over Budweiser but then realised their new lead "weak as piss" alcohol fuelled Prius would only travel to the end of a four house cul-de-sac before deliberately crashing into a lamp post and announcing "attention battery flat fuel tank empty driver sober" simultaneously in Japanese, Klingon and Serbo-Croat.
Get over it Jerry, It happened, the aftermath was witnessed by a few dozen pupils, staff and parents.
I used Unibond bathroom and shower sealant from the local shed. Expensive at 8 quid a go but it's so bloody waterproof it's v.difficult to smooth it after application 'cos it sticks to
*everything*. Flexible too, the only thing that broke it in our case was for some reason the shower tray managed to drop a few mm (don't ask why, I dunno yet!) and the stuff stretched and broke the grout on the surrounding tiles resulting in much leakage.....
The moral to this tale is if yer tray doesn't drop this stuff is good! IMO obviously.
I've had a quick skim of this thread, and I can't see where he said that - can you give a Message-ID so that I can see it on Google? Perhaps my news-server missed it.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.