Text removed as information is no longer current
 

Text removed as information is no longer current

Yes it was part of the life extension back around 94 if I recall correctly.

It was quite a while back, but it seems to me the replacement of that area was due to cracking around the original holes, along with stripping and corrosion. I can't recall if the fumes from the battery boxes contributed to the situation.

It was not a rare situation to have the batteries boil over when the alternator bumped up to 36 volts due to loose battery terminals. It was one of those recoveries where you knew what had happened when you were still 15 feet away from the vehicle.

I know before the re-life came out, we were welding strips of 3/8 flatstock across the body in that location and tapping the holes. So it may have been due to the weld-nuts coming loose and spinning in their holes.

Again, I could be wrong, a lot of years have passed and my selective memory has tried to delete the Iltis file as a bad nightmare.

Every time I could smell the acid, the terminals were loose. By that time, you were also looking at an alternator on top of the two batteries.

The location of the batteries was not conducive to an operator keeping up with his operator's maintenance. Add to that the crappy few tools they got, along with a healthy fear of arcing out the batteries when they did not know which terminals to remove first. Anybody who has ever blown the top off a battery can tell you it is instantaneous and without warning.

I haven't blown one up myself, but I've seen it. Kind of like a grenade, with the sound of a 12ga shotgun. The scary thing is that even a pressure washer can set a battery off. I treat them with great care.

I have blown up 2 over the years, and one of those I should have been looking directly over. Not sure how I missed the blast. But it is not the whole battery that blows up....just the top off one or two cells. And it doesn't take a short...just the smallest of sparks amidst a high concentration of hydrogen.