should have caught on fire!

[gavin1]

i went to autozone and got a new battery.i told the guy what i needed it for and he got it .when i got home i noticed it acting funny then it started jumping ,and the ecu starting clicking.so i pulled off the side of the road and looked under my hood .WOW three burn holes to the underside of my hood! the battery seems too big ,but when i called back down there he doubled checked to see and said it was right? the little red flap on my positive did no good. now why didn't this car catch fire? i'm glad it didn't but wierd huh?

 

[JayRolla]

Well not really. What it was doing was arching and welding itself to the hood. Im pretty sure you melted some ecu wires and maybe fried your ECU. Does it still run?

 

[95blackGsTurbo]

Definately check your ECU to make sure there was no damage. A positive touching the hood can start it on fire but unlikely with a clean new battery. That only happens on batterys that have battery acid and whatnot on top of the battery to ignite.

 

[TJBrown]

Usually fires like this happen when the car is not moving and the battery is being vented (ie caps removed). Batteries let off amounts of Hydrogen that is every flamable. Moving cars dont really have an issue with this due to the air swirling around and diluting the hydrogen around the battery.

 

[Mike1992]

I had this happen on a 91 laser once. Fried the entire electrical system, ecu was still in good shape and worked fine once I replaced the entire wiring harness. DO NOT USE WING NUTS ON YOUR BATTERY TERMINALS, hood clearence is tight!!! And the red insulator on the battery actually caught on fire while smoke rolled out from the engine bay and under the dash.

 

[tearintalon1]

Some batterys come with shipping plastic on bottom did you remeber to take that off?This will make the battery too tall and cause it to ark on hood.

 

[gavin1]

yea the car runs fine, and yea i took the plastic bottom off new battery , all except i think it took it's toll on my new altenator,because my headlights just aren't as bright as they used to be.