Quote:
Originally Posted by ard
voltage regulator on my '72 VW bug died...battery was boiling acid into the cabin. Bad news
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I had three VW's back in the day: a '64 Bug, and '72 and '73 SuperBeetles, all with the battery under the rear seats. I had no battery or electrical troubles with the latter two, but I did have a similar battery acid spillage/boilover with the older Bug.
When I bought it (in '71), the '64 had already damaged the floorpan with acid, which was repainted after a cleanup, but was still pock-marked. Soon afterwards, I had the regulator start acting up, and I perceived the smell of the acid, on my drive to the General Motors Training Center I was attending. I went back outside at lunchtime to see what I could do to temporarily fix the problem (I had already bought another regulator at a nearby VW dealership, during lunch), and the instructor and a few other students came over to see what I was doing.
The instructor furnished me with an acid-neutralizing chemical, and an acid-absorbent pad from his supplies, and my VW was "fixed" until I got home. Over the following weekend, I was able to rivet and seal in a new sheet metal plate under the battery, and place a sacrificial metal pan under the battery itself, to catch the acid if the problem ever occurred again, which it didn't.
On the SuperBeetles, I used plastic pans/trays under the batteries, with acid-absorbing pads inside, but neither ever leaked into them. Over the years, on various cars & trucks, I used a lot of those pads, used many plastic battery boxes (or painted the factory metal trays with POR), but most recently, I haven't taken such precautions on our vehicles. I rely on modern factory instumentation and periodic scan tool testing to find and fix battery problems before any battery boilover could occur.
Having made that last statement, can I now expect my X5's battery to dissolve the trunk underfloor, since I never visual inspect it (the trunk is filled with tools & supplies)?