Battery Blow up!

[Foxcroft80]

Hey all,

Well, had an interesting thing happen today.

I was cruising down the road when I smelled an awful smell, shortly followed by smoke. Upon pulling over and popping the hood I found that my battery had skipped out of the shelf and unto my exhaust manifold where it melted and leaked acid all over the place. After a bunch of baking soda, pressure washing and a new battery my tach, gas gauge and temp gauges are all shot.

Obviously this is directly related to battery acid hitting the wires, but I'm asking - is this simply finding the faulty spots and scabbing in new wires or am I into re running whole systems? Any help would be be appreciated.

Thanks,
Foxcoft-

[Elliot949]

You should be able to splice the damaged wires but I would recommend running new wires...

[Foxcroft80]

Ok, will try to trace all back and deal with. It must have hit one spot to fry those 3 items as speedo and oil pressure are still working...

[franken]

Now might be a good time to fix the battery tray and/or hold down.

[1972RedNeck]

Originally Posted by Foxcroft80

Ok, will try to trace all back and deal with. It must have hit one spot to fry those 3 items as speedo and oil pressure are still working...

Both of those are mechanical so they don't care what the battery does.

[leftybass209]

Yeah, I'd say just about every factory design vehicle has intended for there to be some kind of battery hold-down to prevent things like this!

It would be best to start with your fuses. If you're lucky, you may have just blown the dash fuse, maybe some others, and a simple fuse replacement may save you a wiring extravaganza.

You can splice in wires, but if you're doing so, do it right. Butt connectors add resistance, and there's already going to be some inherent resistance with wiring as old as in these trucks.

The wiring needs to be soldered in to be correct and add as little resistance into the circuits as possible.

[toolboxchev]

Best advise I could give is to wash it again to remove all the sodium from the Baking Soda.

Replace all parts that had been wet by the acid, redo your grounds and finally wash it again.

I have had one explode upon start up. Fairly common they told me at the battery shop. The plates on the inside had touched together.

It really exploded. Top came right off it.

[special-K]

I'll bet your printed circuit is fried from a hot short. Pull your instrument cluster and I believe there you'll find your issue. But, also, you'll be looking for the short that caused it to fry

[Foxcroft80]

Thanks, guys. I'm not very good with electrical but know a guy who does electric on old rigs. I'll probably hand this off to him. I'll definitely go back in this weekend and rescrub the affected areas. And, I have now tied down the battery to prevent this from happening again. $100 plus whatever the electrical damage is that could have absolutely been avoided. Live and learn...