Dodged a bullet, scared to death.....

[foodstick]

I was getting ready to mow at my Moms today... I keep the tractor on a trickle charger because the two batteries are over 7 years old.. its worked well... Today I unhooked the trickle closed the little hood over the batteries right in front of the steering wheel.. turned the key.. saw the light come on for the glow plugs ...its a small John Deere similar to a 20 20 diesel... Hit the key to start it and the right side battery BLEW UP LIKE A BOMB !

It blew the battery cover up... my hat off.. my sunglasses off... I sat there in a daze I really felt a concussion from the explosion. There was a bit of smoke/ fumes coming up from the battery are but no fire.

I sprinted for the house and yelled "Mom baking soda !"

I rubbed it all over my face and arms splashed water and water mixed with soda all over me ..sprinted back to the barn and THANKFULLY its downhill out of the tractor shed I coasted it out of the barn .. it was still gassing/smoking. I dumped baking soda water everywhere... got a hose and started flushing out everything.. then I got a big paint brush and started painting baking soda water all over the wiring and everything.. followed by flushing with the hose.

I also went back in and washed myself a couple times...

Thankfully I somehow never got hurt, burnt the tractor, or barn......

I have to admit I am scared to death of putting new batteries in and starting it now.. I am not sure I can ever be comfortable around a vehicles battery again....

[LM14]

Had it happen once when I worked in a gas station in high school. Had an old, retired, part time guy that came in a few hours a day. He was hooking up a charger when I pulled in for work one afternoon. He usually didn't do much work on cars, just pumped gas. I walked over to see what he was doing and looked into the engine compartment. For some reason, I immediately noticed he had hooked the charger up backwards. I told him to shut it off but he was a bit deaf and just looked at me. I yelled to "kill it" and pointed at the charger, he reached down and turned it the wrong way. As soon as he did it went boom. I ducked away just as it did and got a bit of acid on me but nothing serious. He didn't get any. The car was covered. The boss came running out to see what was going on and started to yell at me about it. I pointed to the old man and he nodded and kept yelling at me. When it was all over, he admitted he knew what had happened but couldn't bring himself to yell directly at the old man. He had kind of inherited him when he bought the station. The old guy finally called it quits soon after that episode. Owner eventually paid for a battery, a paint job for the front clip, some wiring and a bumper for the car.

It can be real scary when it happens. Glad you came out to the better side of things.

[slick4x4]

When I was a kid...10-12 ?..... I was a "scientist" in my head....
Was playing with a charger & car battery
Was directly overhead when it went off
Sounded like 3 shotguns going off at once
Crawled to a water hydrant & washed my eyes out....

I found out in that experiment
Spark & HYDROGEN makes a helluva bomb.....

Glad your ok...

[ThinLizzy13]

This just compounds my distrust of electricity. Glad to hear you're ok.
Also I did not know about the baking soda thing...

[Toyz]

And that is the reason I'ved threatened to fire anyone layinga tool or lit cigarette on a battery!
Paul

[longcabjohn]

Had this happen last week on my skyliner, 5 year old battery, from my research the acid gets low and top part is filled with gas formed from acid when you tried to start a internal short set it off. I put in a new battery after cleaning and every thing was ok. Every thing I found on line appeared to be car that were not driven a lot and older batteries. Put in new and slay grass.


Johnny

[orangeRcode]

DC power is no joke. It scares me more than the 500 MW we produce at my plant.

The sunglasses likely helped protect your eyes. Glad to hear it all worked out. Always wear PPE when doing even the most mundane things around the house!

[Truckrat]

Back in the late 70s and early 80s I used to work on golf cars a lot.
One afternoon I sat down on one to drive it back into the shop where I worked.
Slid the switch to Forward, turned on the key, and mashed the footfeed to
go forward. Soon as I did a battery blew up right under me. Luckily the seat blocked
everything and kept it contained. When I raised up the seat the explosion had
blown the whole top off the battery off and it was just laying there with the wires still connected. Made a pretty good mess under there but soda and a pressure washer
took care of that. Make a hell of a bang when one goes up. TR

[6166 Junkyard Dog]

This is why if we haul one,,, especially if been wrecked I disc. the battery,, seen a few on fire up on top of a rollback

[Alan Mclennan]

Glad to hear your OK Lance and haven`t hurt your boyish good looks , you know, Lyn and I were only talking about you the other day, and I said you haven`t been on much lately, we both agreed that you were probably busy mowing lawns and doing RC stuff .
I`ll take this as a warning as well, and change the battery in my ride-on mower, it`s probably 7 years old and hasn`t held a charge for most of them years, we found the vibrations shake the battery to death, so I just use a jump starter to start it...grass doesn`t grow much here in winter.. so when it warms up I`ll do it....end of July and it`s 70 f here today .. I hate winter!!!!

[ICEMAN6166]

first off glad your ok
had a tire i was airing up blow on me once scared me away from wanting to fill them for a while too

i have seen a few batterys go boom, luckily i have not ever been the target. worst ever was in a shop i worked in, the 12v portable forklift battery blew up on a guy starting to lift a load, made one helluva racket and there was not much left of the battery, lucky he was behind and protected by wire mesh on the lift but he went home for the day anyway.

i starpped a car battery to the back of my riding lawnmower cause im too cheap to buy a new lawn& garden battery
left some jumper cables hanging out the battery door and when i need to mow i just clamp them on and go
have not had to charge that battery either

[Lowell]

Had one blow up in a 84 Plymouth once.Luckily the hood was down. only damage was a small outie ding in the hood.

[64 f100]

Frankly, I've charged weak batteries all my life, and not had a problem. But it is an accident waiting to happen. When over charging dead batteries you are making a bomb and any spark will set it off. All the corrosion that you see from a battery is generally from charging the batteries after their prime . Your creating heat in the battery and this is causing gas to be given off. If you do not keep the battery full of electrolyte, then you have gas in the cells . You have created a bomb. Even keeping those cells full does not guarantee it won't explode. Batteries don't normally explode from a spark, but it can happen easily enough. what you were doing with the batteries is dangerous. You not only create a condition which may cause the spark from the corrosion, but you also create the conditions for the explosion by creating the explosive gas. I'm glad you were not seriously hurt. Batteries are not something to be afraid of normally, but should be respected as being a device that can explode under the wrong conditions. When you see corrosion in , around , and on a battery it's time to start keeping a close eye on it. Most of us have done what you did and charged a bad or failing battery. It becomes deadly in an enclosed space where the oxygen and acid mixture have created the right mixture to explode.

Rich

[Sinc]

Hey Lance,

Glad to hear that you are okay!

Electricity (from ANY source) scares the bejesus out of me. One time in a science class in school (back in the day), I watched our teacher get blown off of his feet and slammed against a wall while explaining how a generator works. BOOM! "Class dismissed…" After that I had a VERY healthy respect for all things electric!