"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Unlike Drivel who likes to claim many things about himself without any
proof, I can assure you Jerry has worked in the motor trade for many a
year.

He may well have, but asserting that lead acid batteries "can't
explode" is absolute and utter clap trap, already borne out by
personal experiences of two posters to this thread alone.

In the circumstances I'll add mine albeit witnessed from a distance

Many years ago I saw the remains of a truck battery very firmly
embedded in the walls of a workshop. The battery was off a 7.5 tonne
ex-army truck with a dozen seats that was used to transport the karts
and pupils to kart club meetings. Some reworking was being done on
the truck where the karts slid onto racks and the battery had been
removed for better access. It had been left in the workshop storeroom
for a number of weeks, well out of the way, usually under lock and
key and with the terminals well protected.

One evening some renegade school karting club pupils got a bit bored
waiting for their drives and wandered off through the open workshop
and thought it would be a good idea to drop a steel bar across the
terminals. After a few seconds it was glowing, moving from dull red
to orange and with smoke and fumes pouring from the rubber casing.
They changed their minds about it being a good idea at this point but
nothing would move the bar, so they scarpered and merged into the
crowd watching the karts. Shortly afterwards the battery had had
enough and ended up in hundreds of pieces with bits flying all over
the place. Despite a few 100cc karts tearing around in the playground
only fifty yards away the noise of the explosion and the half dozen
windows disintegrating immediately attracted everyone's attention. The
cleanup cost a fortune and the kart club was closed. The perpetrators
were never caught although the staff always had their suspicions (one
of the teachers was a friend of my parents) About ten years later the
full story came out during a beer fuelled evening before one of the
perpetrators emigrated to Canada. Me? I was looking at a spark plug
at the time, jumped out of my skin, dropped it and smashed it.
Normally that would be time for an earful from the teacher but on this
occasion they had a lot more to worry about.

The dropped jump leads shorting mentioned previously happened at a
local farm a few years ago, the day was stinking hot and being bare
chested the guy ended up with battery acid over his back and chunks of
plastic battery casing embedded in a tender place.


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