bubbling liquid coming out of my Optima battery?

[dirtynails]

My 83 Blazer has two batteries, one primary and one spare. The spare or auxillary battery is just keeping charged by the battery isolater with nothing running off it. My battery light came on full and I checked my primary battery when I got home. It read ten volts. I charged it up that night and the next morning I start the truck to warm it up. The battery light is still full on, and after the truck gets warmed up, I come out to start looking for what's wrong and I see bubbling liquid coming out of the auxillary battery at the vent on the end closest to the pos. terminal. Now that's wierd. I didn't think there was even liquid in those batteries. But clearly something is seriously wrong. I'm going to go out there right now and do some alternator and charging systems testing right now.

Any ideas?

 

[resurrected_jimmy]

internal short of the battery possibly, optima's use a gel instead of liquid I would say that battery is toast and you ought to remove it from your vehicle before it does any damage

 

[dirtynails]

Hey I like your Nietzsche quote. Sounds like today. I'm putting my boots back on now and going outside to see if I can figure this out. Sounds like I have more than one electrical problem in the charging system. I was originally goin to do a tottally different repair job on my trunk today. The bearings on my blower motor are toast and I need to pull that off so I can either find a way to lubricate them or find out which one to order. That's easy enough, but now with this electrical puzzle, my day is getting a little more interesting.

 

[dirtynails]

I quess I don't understand battery isolators. I pulled the bubbling battery out and started the engine again and my batery light doesn't come on and everything on the charging tests looks good now. So maybe the only problem was the internal short in the auxillary battery. But I don't understand how can a bad auxillary battery that's not connected to any thing but the isolator and ground make my battery light come on like that? I don't have guages, just those idiot lights.

 

[Zeus33rd]

Is the isoloator actually isolating? Meaning- is it old/worn out/defective?

 

[4X4HIGH]

The way a battery isolator works is like this. You have an isolator that has your primary battery hooked up to it and also your auxillary battery hooked to it and then you have your alternator wire going to it as well. Somewhere in the mix is a sense wire. When the key is off both batteries are isolated from each other. Once you start the truck then the alternator is allowed to charge both batteries but in doing so they are like being hooked togehter until the key is switched off again. Hope that made sense.

 

[ryoken]

I'd never run an isolator these days, old technology.. There are MUCH better solutions out now... ACR's and battery mates are far superior imo..