Battery explosion?

In article , James M. Knox wrote:
Thinking back on it all, it's very surprising that we survived to what now
passes for adulthood.

I shudder when I think about the 3 litre bottle of trinitrogen iodide I
had sitting in my study at school...

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Richard Riley" wrote in message
...
[snip]
Every once in a while - like, every 3-5 years - someone will wash their
engine,
close their hood, get in and try to start it. The battery promptly
explodes.
[snip]

Wow! You've really got my attention now. I nearly awways spray water in and
around the front of the hood/grill when washing my car, and usually spray
off the engine once or twice a year. (Pilot wannabe- Still too much time on
my hands)

Anybody have an idea why this would happen? Would leaving the hood open for
a few minutes before attempting to start, or starting WITH the hood open
prevent such an unpleasant incident?

VideoGuy

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 14:00:42 GMT, "Roger Long"
om wrote:

Has anyone heard or experienced this?

On changing the battery in our plane the other day, the A&P said, "You had a
battery explosion." On looking closely, I could see that the box was bowed
out and rounded as if someone had tried to inflate it with air. I'd
noticed that it wasn't exactly square and the cover didn't fit very well but
thought it was just poor workmanship.

He said it probably happened during starting from hydrogen build up that the
propwash hadn't had a chance to blow away yet and the pilot thought it was a
backfire. No harm done except we'll need a new box because of corrosion.
It could have happened years ago.

--
Roger Long

I've seen it twice and had a close call on my own battery one winter's
day. I was an auto mechanic in another life and happened to be
watching a nearby Peugeot mechanic working on a dead car that had just
been dragged in. I think I helped push it in, in fact. I'd moved
away from the car and was about twenty feet off when the old dude who
worked on those things connected the charger to the battery. It
instantly exploded, scattering pieces of plastic and acid all over the
shop. The mechanic was scratched in a few places (painfully as the
cuts got splattered with acid) but was otherwise unharmed, including
his eyes as he was wearing glasses. He was lucky.

I saw another explode when a guy tried charging a frozen battery. I
mean literally, the acid was so diluted from being discharged that it
froze. That battery blew apart, but due to the ice, it wasn't a huge
explosion.

The time my own battery tried to explode, I'd removed all the battery
caps before attempting to charge it. I'd connected the charger,
making the negative connection away from the battery as you are
supposed to to lower the possibility of causing a spark near the
battery. I was removing the charger and failed to removed the
negative side first. This caused a spark and the escaping hydrogen
instantly blew up. But since the caps were off the battery, it only
resulted in a loud POP as the hydrogen ignited and it did no damage to
the battery or me.

There's a reason you are told to attach the positive lead first, and
connect the ground to something away from the battery. Problem is,
sometimes this results in such a poor connection that jumping the dead
battery is problematic.

Corky Scott

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
In article , James M. Knox
wrote:
Thinking back on it all, it's very surprising that we survived to what
now
passes for adulthood.

I shudder when I think about the 3 litre bottle of trinitrogen iodide I
had sitting in my study at school...


I guess you mean nitrogen triiodide, but yes, you wouldn't want that baby to
dry out!

Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas
N7NZ

I used to partially fill balloons with propane from the tanks attached to
the house for the cooking stove farm boy - handy with tools and then
finish inflating them with compressed air farm boy, etc.... Throw em up in
the wind and shoot at them with my .22 rifle as they bounced across the
field - great bang and gouts of smoky flame... I did a lot of that being
alone all day at the farm with them gone to work...

My mother used to complain to my dad that she couldn't understand why she
ran through cooking propane so fast in the summer but not in the winter...
He would be out there with soap solution looking for leaks... I never told
them about the balloons - it was too darn cold in the winter plus I was in
school all day - and now that you made me remember, I regret I did not tell
her later in life, she would have gotten a good laugh...

denny

"James M. Knox" wrote in message
...
Mark Mallory wrote in
:

Reminds me of my high-school days when two friends were doing some
welding with a oxy-acetylene torch.

"John Clonts" wrote in
news

I guess you mean nitrogen triiodide, but yes, you wouldn't want that
baby to dry out!

Of course you do, just not in your dorm room. We used to paint the insides
of the door jams with the stuff. One guy once used a dilute solution of
the stuff to basically "wax" the old linoleum tile in an entire room (never
did get all the stain off afterwards).

But we never mixed it up in multi-liter quantities!

Now there were some other little things we used to do with sodim compounds
and sugar and ... well, that's another story.

-----------------------------------------------
James M. Knox
TriSoft ph 512-385-0316
1109-A Shady Lane fax 512-366-4331
Austin, Tx 78721
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