Passenger Compartment Batteries

[Zelandeth]

My Skoda has its battery under the rear seat...

Behind the rear seat - and in such a location that if it were mechanically shorted out, a gassing or catching fire battery are probably going to be a good way down the list of things to worry about - especially as the fuel tank would already have been squashed like a tin can and would have probably dumped it's contents over the exhaust. It's a good ways inboard in a very solid location.

It's also in a pretty well sealed location under a separate locking gasket sealed cover, the compartment has an external vent. The car is also far less well sealed than modern ones, so gas buildup is less likely - as soon as you start moving there's pretty good airflow through the car, even with the fan off and windows closed. Unlike in a Xantia!

With a 45A alternator, it also lives a HUGELY easier life than the batteries in modern cars I reckon. I've never given it a second thought to be honest.

Series Land Rovers have the battery under the passenger seat, and MGBs also have it behind the seats (2x 6V ones in fact I think). Jag XJs and Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and Spirit all have the battery in the boot.

It's an increasingly bad idea in modern cars though given how much harder they work - *especially* in anything with stop-start systems...

[CitroJim]

I went outside and opened the battery locker. The smell of rotten eggs was over-powering. Not only that - the battery was much too hot to touch. Fortunately I keep a spanner in the locker so I could loosen one of the clamps and disconnect the charger. It took several hours for the battery to cool. I believe it was not far off blowing its lid.

I had a similar experience many years ago in a Renault 4. Driving happily along when the smell of rotten eggs got rather more intense and could not be blamed on anything external to the car...

I stopped and the battery was practically wobbling, steaming and red-hot As was the dynamo - shows how long ago it was...

I disconnected the dynamo and carried on to my destination about 20 miles further on...

There I discovered the regulator had failed with a welded circuit breaker contact...

I fixed it on a temporary basis until I could find a new one; the battery lasted a few days before it died very suddenly and very comprehensively.

The problem became apparent in very close proximity to Stickyfinger's house - not that I knew Alasdair then...

[Peter.N.]

The old Mini Van had the battery behind the driving seat, the chap that used to do my aerial work had one, one of the terminals had obviously come loose, created a spark and ignited the hydrogen and the battery exploded, apart from spraying the interior of the van with sulphuric acid he said it nearly deafened him.

Peter

[Gibbo2286]

My first car, a 1937 Austin 10 had a six volt battery under each of the front seats linked together to provide 12 volts, a common fault was for the bottom of the case to rust away and drop the battery onto the road.

[CitroJim]

My first car, a 1937 Austin 10 had a six volt battery under each of the front seats linked together to provide 12 volts, a common fault was for the bottom of the case to rust away and drop the battery onto the road.

I can remember that about the Austin 10... We had a scrap one in out garden when I was a little kid...

Along with an Austin 7 Chummy and an Austin Ruby...

All were mobile and drivable...

Sadly, they got scrapped when we moved in 1967 Goodness knows how much they'd be worth now...

[GiveMeABreak]

Time for one of these then...

[myglaren]

I use an electric fork lift at work - hardly ever get serviced despite it being not much more than a pile of scrap.
Battery has two dead cell, been that way for months.
Twice a week we need to lift 2x 1 ton blocks of MDF up onto a rack approx 18' high and it absolutely stinks of hydrogen sulphide, battery compartment alarmingly warm.
Most recent development is one of the four* front wheels has collapse, bearings knackered. Happened two weeks ago and still not fixed. The wheel eventually seizes and has completely worn away at the bottom so the 'runner' just drags along the ground. Needless to say it is very slow now and squeals a lot.

* I say four - there should be, but two suffered the same problem two years ago and the repair gadgy threw them away - problem solved

Nothing ever gets serviced, just bodged when it breaks

[CitroJim]

^^ Steve, that's shocking

[myglaren]

I'm tempted to ignite it when it is pushing out the hydrogen sulphide.

[wurlycorner]

under PUWER/LOLER isn't the FLT user responsible for undertaking pre-use checks and confirming fit for use?
And under HSE regs you can refuse to work if you consider it is unsafe.
I. E. If they're just not fixing it, just refuse to use it?

Or if you think that wouldn't go down well... Drop an anonymous line to the HSE outlining your concerns and they will probably turn up and do an unannounced inspection and (if it's as an serious as you say) they would immediately slap a prohibibition/improvement notice in your employer.

[myglaren]

There is a repair pending - new wheels are on order allegedly.
Problem is spread throughout the whole system though. H&S counts when it suits them and is ignored when it doesn't.

They threw out all kettles, microwaves and fans that belonged to individual workers (H&S - untested therefore unsafe) but retain all other portable appliances, some most recently tested 2014, the rest untested.
We had to throw out a set of glue cubitainers (1,000L) that had the tops cut of and were used to collect plastic for recycling. The reason - there was a "Toxic" sign on them. They had not contained any glue for months if not years - it is the glue that is toxic*, not the containers.
But when we run out of the cages that replaced them what do we do - cut the tops off the cubitainers and fill with plastic offcuts!

The place is a joke, glad I will be out of there soon.

*contains Methyl Isocyanate, as I have found to my cost - there were no "Toxic" signs on it back then, nor any COSHH data available until it was too late.

[milleplod]

Our Merc R500 has the battery under the front passenger seat. Fitting a new one took around 3 hours.....and I put my back out getting the new one into place! Having said that, the original one was still going strong-ish at 10 years old - I only swapped it as, much like on C5s, odd little electrical glitches kept cropping up that could be attributed to a battery past its best. The new one banished the glitches fortunately!

Pete

[JohnD]

So you're saying that your experience is that the H2S smell occurs more frequently because of a bad battery? How many times has this happened?

To me - just the once. The smell probably occurs more often in caravans rather than cars because all the time the caravan is connected to the camp's electric supply, the on-board charger is attempting to put 13.8 volts into a dud battery. Hence the heat - and because of the hot acid - the hydrogen sulphide gas is given off.

[Peter.N.]

Its quite a common phenomena, if one cell fails the good ones will charge it up backwards and as its resistance is higher, the voltage drop can cause the acid to boil.

Peter

[van ordinaire]

At least it doesn't seem you have to tell a VW it's had a new battery fitted, unlike some Fiats which I blieve won't start with a new battery - because they don't know one's been fitted.

Of course VW have probably built more cars with the battery under the back seat than anyone, as that's where it is in a Beetle, old style vented to the air ones at that, MGB's were the same, except there were 2 of them - & they didn't benefit from the quite substantial mettle cover that Beetles had. The only vented battery I ever came across was in an XJ40 - & that, perversely, was under the bonnet. The '97 - '04 Cadillac Seville had a vented battery under the backseat, although all the hardware was missing from mine &, on past experience, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. That battery & one fuse box the other side, on a car plagued by parasyrtic battery drain was more than enough to contend with, thanks very much.