Has anyone else seen an Optima battery boil over? A friend had his blow the black vent cap out and it released a strong plume of sulphuric acid vapor for about 10 minutes.

The alternator output was fine and when we tested the battery it showed 12.3 volts.

I had the lid pop off of mine 3 summers ago. They gave me a new one. It was 6 mth old.:)

never seen it happen...I know you have to slow charge them when (if) you drain 'em completly. Was the case damaged in any way? Are you sure the alt. wasn't over chargin'? Anybody else seen this happen?

was it near a heat source? Maybe he bolted it to his Exhaust and thats whats causing the problem :p

Alternator output wasn't too high and the battery was in the stock mounting location in his Explorer. This battery was also about 6 months old.

That doesn't sound like it would be too nice to be standing anywhere near the batt. when that happened....
As someone else said, they should replace it though.

Maybe Optima put out a bad batch about 6-8 months ago. A friend had 2 of his blow the cap within a week of each other last month. Both were replaced gratis but ruined the underside of his FJ40's hood with the vapors. No abnormal heat or electrical problems either.:eek:

mine boiled when the regulator was bad and it was overcharging. you say the battery is 12.3 and the alt is ok but was is output of alt at higher rpm.

ok i cant say boiled as it didnt, it vented

BiggassYJ on this board has had similar problems his terminals caught on fire and smoked and it ruined the battey, so I believe he is getting another.

Hey,

I sold Optimas for 4 years... Every time one "vented".. The customers regulator was shot.. We had one guy at idle it was a kosher 13.9 volts.. and when we revved it up it spiked to 18 or 19 volts..I always looked for this after we ahd this problem and we found the problem every time!..

Milkman,

:flipoff2: :vader2:

As I said in this case the alternator/regualator output appeared fine. The voltage didn't spike with RPM it only increased slightly with revs.

yup, my friend poped his cap charging at 16volts or so when the reg went south

Just to add to this..

Since were talking about optimas.

I had one go south on me after I drained it completely. It would pop the internal circuit breaker on the charger. I called optima and heres what they told me


Take your dead battery, Put a 50 amp booster on it for 10 mins. Then trickle charge it for 12 hours. I talked to a friend of mine that works for an autoparts store, He did this to mine and its been holding a charge since saturday. He commented on that he has done this a few times and 8 out of 10 have come back and work fine for years. I bought a new one because it was only 40 bucks but my friend has a nice used optima on his work bench now.