battery fumes

[southernman1967]

the other day i smelled a rotten egg smell in my cab looked under hood passenger side battery was smoking replaced battery today coming home same thing smell and smoking volt gauge in truck is showing above 14 -16 what is going on here?

[jlwelding]

Sounds like the regulator in the alternator is going bad.

[Mopar1973Man]

Or the field lead (green in the 2nd gens) on the alternator is shorted to ground. This would cause a wild runaway alternator. Or a possible voltage regulator problem (inbedded in the PCM 2nd Gen)AH64ID is the best man to answer this...

[AH64ID]

Most commonly this issue is due to a bad/loose crossover cable. The alternator hooks up directly to the pass battery, but the ECM monitors temp and voltage at the drivers battery. I would check the cable and the temp sensor (under the drivers battery), voltage of 14-15 is normal, my high voltage alarm is at 15.2 and will go off on occasion when the grids cycle off. Always replace batteries in pairs, or you may be replacing the new one with the other one in short order.

[southernman1967]

found three loose connections one on passenger side that the dealership just put in drivers both loose tighten all up seems too fine so far drove about 100 miles today smell hasnt come back. i hope this fixes it. thanks for the help.

[AH64ID]

Hopefully that does the trick.

[flagmanruss]

My brother had a run away alt on a Dodge Colt. It was smoking when he got to the shop at the marina. We got the hood up... everything was too hot to touch. It had fried the battery but good... We disconnected the battery cables with bolt cutters & set the battery on the ground. It was still too hot to handle 3 days later. Eventually, the battery cooled off enough to scrap. A new alt/regulator, an Exide Battery from our stock, a few cable ends & he was good to go. I've never seen anything like it. We thought that the regular might have stuck on, put out full power contineously, boiled all the water out of the battery until it failed, shorting internally which was why it stayed hot. (My Dad had been in electronics... started at Philco... which was originally Philadelphia Storage Battery Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco )

[southernman1967]

so far so good no smoking yet thanks to everybody saved me aloooooot of money i hope!