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Registered
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Dahlonega , Georgia
Posts: 15,042
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Back when I was 16 and in a very cold Upstate N.Y. winter I removed the car battery from the car and brought it into our basement to thaw/charge . I hooked up the charger and walked away waiting for the battery to come up to full charge . This was back in the day of individual cell caps . It was several hours before I realized I had made a mistake , my dad had taught me to always loosen the cell caps to allow outgassing while charging . Being young , stupid , inexperienced I grabbed my winter coat and went downstairs to de-cap the battery . So picture this: a somewhat frozen battery had been thawing/bubbling from the charging process . Gasses built up in the battery . I was bent over and my face/head directly over the battery . I don't remember how many caps I had removed when the explosion took place , I remember a bright light and the huge explosion sound and that's about it . I was in a daze and the next thing I remember was someone grabbing my arm and the cold rush of water . My mom had heard the explosion , ran downstairs and saw what happened and she grabbed my arm and pulled me to the slop sink in our basement and started pouring water over me to get the battery acid off of me .
By shear stupid luck I was 100 % unharmed from the blast ! I couldn't hear for a few hours but that eventually came back . The jacket that I had put on had acid stains/holes in it from wrist to wrist the acid sprayed right up to my neck and across my chest . The top of the battery had blown off and the plates/fragments were sticking in the floor rafters/plywood decking !!! How it didn't kill me or blind me is still amazing to this day . When my dad came home from work he looked the carnage over and asked me what happened . He surmised that when I was unscrewing the caps one of my fingers or hands bumped one of the alligator clips of the charger , causing a spark and kablamoh as David Hobbs would say . I was a VERY lucky boy that day and have respected/feared batteries ever since . A lot of power stored in those bad boys !
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2002 Boxster S . Arctic silver + black top/int. Jake Raby 3.6 SS engine " the beast ". GT3 front bumper, GT3 side skirts and GT3 TEK rear diffuser. 1999 996 C4 coupe black/grey with FSI 3.8 engine . Rear diffuser , front spoiler lip with ducktail spoiler .
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