Blown Battery

SDMike

Member
Went to start the 4010 on Sunday to move snow, turned the key, saw a flash under the floor on the right side, turned off key, tried again, saw what appeared to be a small blue flame, turned the key off, opened the battery box and this is what I found. (damage to the negative terminal was during removal) I have heard of this happening if you hook up jumper cables wrong, but not just doing it on it's own. Battery new Jan 2015. Be safe out there.

Mike
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I had the same thing happen on a 4020 probably 35 years ago. Made quite a noise!
 
The spark you saw at first ignited the hydrogen gases that there in the battery which in turn caused it to blow up. Hydrogen is highly flammable and trapped inside a battery they then to cause an explosion
 
Sounds like the battery might have developed an internal problem or had a bad cell or there was a short and it was emitting hydrogen gas out the top, then there was an arc/spark near there (loose connection perhaps) and when you turned on the key BOOM lol. During charging (or a fault) some hydrogen gas exits out the top of a battery and any spark near there can cause an explosion. Even if alls well a good battery can have some residual hydrogen near its top both during and for some time after charging. Often just before such a thing happens you might smell the gas and that's a good time to shut it off and get away until the gas/odor subsides.

John T
 
Had one blow up on a skid loader 2 years ago. Guy turned the key to start, and there was a loud boom.

Count yourself lucky... we had t o get the boom up to replace the @#$ thing!
 
I had one blow on my od chevy car once but my fault, battery had been dead, I jump started car and was running. I was trying to clean it off and arced it. Battery blew all apart, I was lucky to have jumped back when it arced. I knoe an older mechanic who lost his vision when a battery blew up in his face.
 
Maybe dry batteries like Optima ones are safer?
Why don't they make a skyny 6 cells in a row Optima?
 
I have had two Strongbox batteries explode in the past ten years, total of zero batteries explode in the 41 years prior to that. Coincidence? Probably. Thanks to a discount at O'Reilly's AP, I buy from them now. Probably the same manufacturer...
 
Greetings greenies, Couple of years ago I had one blow up on a yellow tractor, MF, cuz I allowed it to run dry and was jump starting it. Luckily, I was nt leaning over top of it. I found pieces of the top 75+- feet away. I figured out that the less water they have, the more capacity for gas they have. (Bigger bomb) Treat them with respect! 80 deg. in Cave Creek AZ. VH
 
I had a battery blow up on a freight liner semi truck on our farm. It had three batteries side by side. I was just blowing the dirt off them to check the water levels and one exploded in front off me. Lucky only got a little acid on my clothes.
 

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