AMS battery swelling?
 

so i just bought a 05 EVO that is going to be my next project that i will be posting a seperate thread on in the next few days but in the meantime i have problem with my battery. when i bought the car the owner said that the AMS battery went dead so he bought another one and that one went dead too because the car sat for about 3 years and was only started once in a while so he put a reguar sized one in it and never tried charging them, he was told you need a special charger so i got 2 mini batterys with purchase. however when i drove it home (4 hours one way) i popped the hood the next day and i noticed that it was leaking out of the top ( it was leaning a little and not tied down) so i took one of the AMS batterys that came with the car and hooked it up to a charger for about 20 mins and installed it and car started no problem, the battery did get warm with the initial charge. i drove around a bit last night and started to get a funny egg smell and couldnt figure it out, i popped the hood today to work on it and noticed it swelled to the point of the seams seperating. any ideas? do you think the battery i drove home with got so warm it started to leak? it looks like it has a great ground connection and the car has no aftermarket subs/amp either, thanks in advance for the help.

i tried to get some pics to post from my phone but its no cooperating right now, i will try to get some up tomorrow if needed

I would trash it and get a new one. Would suck to have blow under your hood or in your face. Gl

sounds like that battery was bad to begin with to have to swell up from driving. what amp rating did you use when charging the mini battrey? It should be a 2 amp setting for those.

im pretty sure it was 2 amps on the charge, i know we flicked the switch back and forth a couple times between 2 and 10 to see if the needle would move maybe it destroyed something on the inside? i also just remembered that they put a longer ground cable on to fit the bigger battery so its a little over 1 foot, maybe thats an issue as well

the longer ground shouldnt be an issue so long as where the ground was bolted to on the other end was a good grounding point. If you are wondering if you have a good ground on your battery then there is a simple way to check for resistance in the ground connection. 1) connect the batt pos and neg cables 2) get a volt meter and check the battery voltage from the battery posts themselves. should be 12.xx 3) Now using the voltmeter connect one lead to the pos of the battery and the black lead of the meter to a KNOWN good ground. if your reading anything less than batt voltage then basically what your reading is the voltage of the battery connected with the long ground you mentioned and then yes you do have a ground issue. If not then your ground is good. Hope this makes sense. {thumbup}

ya i am definatley going to check ground just in case thanks for the help guys i really appreciate it, here is a couple photos

have you checked to see if the alternator is putting out to much voltage and over charging/heating the battery? only time ive seen that happen a car was running 17 volts battery started to expand and leak.

that i have not but if you have personally witnessed that then i am going to go get my friends volt meter and test it and see, thanks for the tip

thats caused by a dead cell. well 99% of the time thats why the swell like that.
just replace it and see what happens.

ya it definately could be a dead cell what sucks is the battery i chose to charge up is the new one...:( last night i double checked the ground and someone decided to ground everything to a spot that is still covered in paint....gonna sand it, change battery check for voltage and give you guys an update