Q: Car possibly destroying batteries

asked by on November 11, 2016

Last week I noticed a strong sulfur smells coming from under my hood. Being that Im broke and have ZERO knowledge about cars I ignored it and kept my fingers crossed it would go away. The day after I noticed smoke. At the same time the battery light popped up on my dash. I popped the hood, was hit with a strong smell of sulfur, seen TONS of smoke coming off the battery, and seen liquid on and around the battery. I changed out the battery and the smoking and smell stopped. Now, less than a week later I can smell the sulfur again, am noticing a small amount of smoke, and hear a faint and steady high pitched hum/crackle coming from either the battery or fuse box. I really cannot tell which it's coming from. Could something within the fuse box cause an issue with the battery? If not, what else could cause the battery to be funky. The spark plugs have recently been replaced and a friend tested the alternator which was normal. Please help. Thanks!

My car has 190000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.

Hey there. This may be related to a bad ground connection possibly causing a short or possibly a bad voltage regulator. This is a unit that regulates the charging of the battery by the alternator. Often times, this will result in the alternator allowing too much power to be delivered to the battery resulting in damaging wires and prematurely sometimes destroying the battery as in your case. In other cases, it may result in the alternator not supplying enough power to the battery, resulting in undercharging the battery or not charging it at all. If you would like to have this properly addressed, I recommend having a certified technician inspect the battery in person so they can figure out exactly what should be done.

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