My lawn tractor battery wouldn’t hold a charge and so I placed it on a trickle charger. This was months ago, but just recently and sulfury stench developed in the garage and I think I traced it to the battery. Is this possible? Can a constantly charging or overcharging battery give off a horrible odor?
Sure. The redox potential for sulfate->sulfide (E[sub]0[/sub]’) is about -110 millivolts, and you’ve been feeding in 6 to 12 volts for months.
Yep. Overcharging can make the electrolyte boil and give off fumes. Chances are pretty good that your iffy battery has gone round the bend and is now unambiguously bad.
Darn, and I my trickle charger was used in automatic mode. Perhaps the charger is bad as well.
Sometimes, with luck, a dried battery can be revived by restoring the water. Often, though, chemical debris has established bridges between positive and negative plates. There are some engineer/conjurers in the world who can tell you how to overwinter a lead-acid battery without killing it. I’m not one of them.
Always replentish the water with “Distilled Water.”