Batteries are big right now because of the cold, or depending on the day, because it’s starting to look like the first breaths of Spring and people are getting their projects out and are starting to get something accomplished. I’m going through at least two to three battery replacements a day and testing, charging, or selling at least five more on top of that. Given the cost of batteries, the Store Manager and the District Manager are very happy gentlemen, indeed. When the upper end of the command structure is happy, they tend to leave the lower end of it alone, so I’m happy.
The problems are that batteries are naturally hazardous. Acid, lead, and the ability to explode due to hydrogen gas production means that batteries need to be monitored to make sure that all is well. And as anyone who even remotely considers themselves a gearhead knows, there’s a big chunk of the population that doesn’t check their oil until the light comes on…enough said there.
I’ve yet to ever hear of or experience a battery explosion and I pray I never do. That is the ultimate nightmare situation. My main focus on batteries is acid. The acid, a mixture of sulfuric acid and water, is a painful experience. As a little kid who was unsupervised often around junk cars, I would wonder why my hand stung like hell after messing with a wet battery. A round or two would cure that wonder. Holes in clothes, that tangy smell not leaving anytime soon, the chemical burns…I have a healthy respect for lead-acid automotive batteries.
The first problem we run into at the store are “wet batteries”. For whatever reason, there is acid on the outside of the battery. Usually it’s loose battery caps or a compromised outer shell. Usually the owner has absolutely no clue as to what’s wrong and just assumes that it’s normal. In one instance, they brought the battery in, and as they set it down on the counter, acid started pouring from the caps and the top seam of the battery TOWARD ME. I leapt back as if a lion had tried to take a swipe at me while unloading a string of words that normally would’ve gotten me a severe talking-to. We have an ash mixture to neutralize the acid…and the best way to describe what it looks like is cocaine. It looks like I just took thousands of dollars of cocaine and dumped it onto battery acid. As the situation neutralizes, no pun needed, the customer becomes very nervous and starts to stammer out an apology to me. I look like Hannibal Lecter when he is strapped to the dolly with the mask on. And I’m seriously wondering what chianti would go with the fava beans and his soul.
The other problem I get: We have a battery test station that can recharge batteries. A customer can leave the battery if it tests good but dead, and pick it up later. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just crap batteries or the individual who hooked up the machine didn’t put in the right rating, but one of the scariest noises I’ve heard was a very loud “pop” from the case followed by that tangy acid smell. Cue up over $10,000 worth of cocaine…er, ash, and throw it at the battery while cutting power and cursing like a drunken sailor. Once I throw the battery into a HAZMAT bag, proceed to take a Shop-Vac and vacuum up what now looks like baking soda that absorbed cat urine. Bring screwdriver to chip away at it, if necessary. While you’re at it, bring me an aspirin to make sure I make it through this heart attack. Once done, HAZMAT bag the solution and wait patiently for the customer to return, so I can inform him that they have to replace a battery that just did it’s best impersonation of Orville Reddenbacher’s finest, and wait for the idiot child who hooked up the battery to confess so that I may be justified in caning them with the hook we use to get the serpentine belts from the upper racks.
Until next time…
Had a customer that wanted his battery flushed got mad when i said all u need is purified water added to battery
Had a coworker that would take caps off batteries when charging ah the smell of sulfer
I manage a Battery warehouse. In addition to about 65,000 new batteries a year we also sell used batteries. So at any given time we can have 100-200 batteries on the chargers. We don’t get one exploding all that often(rarely really) but when they do its always an eye opener.
I work at a dealership and usually end up fixing the dead cars on the lot. One day a salesman (not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer, this one) comes back and tells me we have a used Accord on the lot with a dead battery and that he has a customer coming to look at it, he tried to start it with a booster pack to no avail. Grab a booster pack, go out, hook it up and absolutely nothing. Rally a group of techs, we push it in the shop, I hook up the tester and the battery fails. Install a new battery and still nothing. Go up and talk to the salesman and finally, with a little cajoling, he admits that he MAY have accidentally hooked the jump pack up backwards. Wow
Really?! Wow…I always get nervous with the new people for the same reason.
Yep. Then we had to hunt down an Accord 100A master fuse, which no one had, so the salesman had to call the customer and say that they had to wait a couple days to come look at the car and they ended up going someplace else and buying a different car. All because he couldn’t hook the red cable to the red terminal and black cable to the black terminal
This if the first really, really cold winter I’ve gone through since being a parts guy, and it’s really shocking how many people have come in trying to get a warranty on a frozen battery.
Batteries can get a little cold, bolted into a car, not used for a couple of days maybe, no big deal. But if you leave one OUTSIDE, like, say, in a damn snowbank, or sitting on your porch, it WILL die. Key sign? The sides of the battery bulge out excessively, get brittle, and icy cold to the touch. The battery is more than likely ruined now, and no, I will NOT give you warranty for it.
Worse still, I had a guy bring one in that was that bad, only worse, as it had cracked on two sides, leaked all over my counter, and the plastic casing had been SO frozen that it looked positively brittle. And he blamed the battery, ranting and raving while I attempted HAZMAT procedures.
I haven’t had any bad battery acid burns, but being the guy in the store who does core and warranty returns, I’ve ruined a few shirts and a pair of pants. And it’s slow-acting–nothing more embarrassing than doing a bunch of work out back hauling batteries, and three hours later a customer points out you now have a gaping jagged hole in the front of your shirt….
With you there. I’m down at least three pair of jeans and one of my hoodies (before I got work shirts, I wore them in.)
The chick at work was at her 3rd pair of pants during a battery peak this winter. We (the guys) all use the adjustable jaws available to carry batteries around. Very useful to carry the dirty cores too!
Yup, I use one religiously now. Every now and then i still get some spillage though.
Be glad that batteries are shipped wet now. When I started in the parts biz, many moons ago, batteries came in dry. As the new kid I had to fill each battery with acid when it was sold. I had many acid burns & ruined shirts & pants. Battery acid is nasty stuff. I don’t miss it at all!
There are still many motorcycle batteries that come empty (requiring filling).
And all need charging before being sold.
At the motorcycle dealership I worked at usually the parts guys were responsible for filling and charging. But there were many a time when us in Service had to deal with batteries because Parts was busy/had not gotten to/or it was that one odd-ball battery we only sell once a year so keeping it filled and charged wasn’t worth it.
I’m seriously wondering what chianti would go with the fava beans and his soul.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! awesome! this took me back to working at the garage, great read this morning, made me laugh. Better you than me!
I had a truck at the shop that we couldn’t keep the battery charged in. It had a short no one could find and the battery would go down over night if the cables weren’t taken off.
Anyway I had a new guy that had to go out in the truck to deliver an engine to a customer that decided they needed it a day after they brought it in and was on my ass for the next week over it. The cable didn’t get unhook the night before so the battery was dead. Instead of telling someone that he didn’t know how to hook the cables up the kid put them on backwards. The next thing I knew someone was yelling at me that the truck was on fire as he was running out of the shop with an extinguisher. The wiring was completely fired and I had to get a new truck.
I suggested to the kid he find another line of work.
That’s the charger cables the kid didn’t hook up right.
So I have a weak battery that winter got the best of two years ago. Basically as soon as the engine is shut off the voltage drops immediately to 11.9v, but it still has some good cranking amps left in it (a good ol’ 34DT!). I’ve had the battery in two cars, out of the car and on the charger, etc and it’s definitely the battery. I popped the caps and the fluid looked a little low, so figured I’d pour some fresh acid into it. Back in my Autozone days we sold the small bottles of acid for like $10, but here in Ely, no luck. One parts store said they could get me a 5 gallon container of acid though. Pfft, I said I want to top off a battery not destroy evidence at a crime scene. So it still sits low and weak’ish (in my Firebird).
When I was at autozone, we had a few pop over the years, and I know exactly the type of customers you are referring too that are completely oblivious to the acid pouring out of their battery.
Hot weather is what kills batteries that and neglect cold weather is when it shows up
Batteries being frozen in -30ºF does it to. It rarely gets above 90ºF here at any point of the yaer, so it’s pretty clear the cold kills them too. My John Deere lawnmower battery and my Kawasaki Motorcycle battery didn’t survive the winter either. Neither hold a charge at all. The vechicles I started regularly, and put engine heat into the engine bay, had no battery issues.
*year
These posts are great takes me to back in the day behind the counter
Those were the days, we are located near a large military base. When I was the parts game the many of the supply guys figured out they could buy parts from me cheaper and faster than the military supply chain, since they all had visa cards and word got out I was the go to guy at our store. One of the hot items, especially at deployment time was batteries. The 6TL batteries weighed about 60 pounds each, dry, and I would get the pleasure of filling them, usually by the pallet load. These suckers took about a gallon and a half of acid to fill. Many pants and shirts were ruined, and the battery room looked like Tony Montanas office when I was done, good times.
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Bangshift needs to invest in a translator, or subtitles.
or an anti spam software
? Do you have something to ask yet? had been collated, a part of the retirement you will find that it” Prada wallet outlet [/ url]. Smoke emergency phone salvation to the hospital in the cup no spike than usual . Translation of that^ he’s permanently burned by acid
In ’77, I had a ’74 Gran Torino, and was driving through Arizona. I suddenly lost electrical power and the car died. I got out of the car and opened the hood. Just as I did, the battery blew up. After a few days in the hospital due to the burns, I went looking for my car. When I found it, the acid had destroyed the paint, had eaten through some of the thinner metal, wiring, and so forth. To this day, I will not have anything to do with batteries, still gun shy.
Wow. Can’t blame you.
2 comments to make here – Silverbuick, I don’t know if you can get this in the states but here you can buy stuff called Inox – its just a little bottle around 10 bucks and its a battery reconditioner…when I first saw it a few years ago I thought ` snake oil’ but it works – had a battery that would barely crank or hold a charge and I was broke so I tried it – charged fine afterward and kept that battery going for another 2 years – I’ve used it since a couple of times, its good stuff. The other thing that was mentioned was about batteries blowing up…I had a 59 Fairlane with a 332 in it many moons ago and one day after work there wasn’t enough left to crank so I called my brother for a jump start…. he hooked the leads to his car, and I was sitting inside mine ready to start it when he hooked them up to my battery…the bang was so loud my ears were ringing (and I was inside the car) – looked up to see how my brother was and he’s flat on his back – not good…he had acid all over him which isn’t good but the worst injury was one of the caps off the battery hit him square in the eye – nearly lost his eye but turned out OK – he had a black eye out of it though. This is about the point we realised that it was positive earth, unlike his later model car which was negative earth…the battery itself, there was maybe 2 or 3 inches of the sides left and the base – the rest was gone. All my cranking on it before he arrived must have generated a healthy load of hydrogen gas..
*Noted!
I’m actually going to try and use the pro-rate warranty on the battery when I’m in California (no Autozone’s here) as I think it’s 4 or 5 years old on an 8 year warranty.
The 8 year warranty is usually a pro-rata warranty so they’ll take some money off the price of a new one but not give you a new one.
I AGREE TOTALLY with whatever Chaizelmazige said partly on principal and partly because : . You fill in the blanks LOL
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Had a customer bring in a 4D series battery a while ago and the thing was destroyed. I guess they had it on the charger in the shop and thankfully no one was in there when it blew up. Pretty much there was no outside case left, all that was left were the plates and the posts. Also I’ve found that Craftsman or Dickies have work pants that are chemical/acid resistant that work great if you deal with batteries a lot like I do. For a few bucks more than jeans it’s a good investment.