Bad Battery: Nearly caught my truck on fire this morning

There is a lot going on here so bear with me. I've never seen this before...

Friday 10/24: I have my oil changed before heading to the deer camp and one of the free inspection points was a battery check. Oil change dude says, "Battery checks good." and shows me a tablet with a graph and a green check. I'm not blaming them, just odd that it checked good before near catastrophic failure.

Before I leave town and on the way to the camp that afternoon I charge this LED light I use at the camp using the cigarette lighter plug in the dash. This was the first time I ever did this.



When I get to the deer camp and unpack I smell a weird smell that I attribute to maybe the oil change dude spilled a little oil on my engine that is burning off.

I raise the hood and see no obvious signs of spilled oil.

Truck cranks fine the next day and runs fine through yesterday but the smell is constant.

This morning I load the kids for the morning school drop off routine and my battery is dead. I jump it using my wife's vehicle and off we go.

I crank the heater because it was 51 degrees this morning and all of my kids start flipping out. "Whats that smell?!?!" "Clyde Jr. farted!!!" etc.

I kill the heater and say, that's the first time I cut it on this year, maybe it is burning off dust or something. Crack the windows and ventilate the cabin.

The smell persist.

After drop off, I stop by a friend's house about 7:30 for coffee since it's his 76 birthday.

The smell persist.

I tell him, come smell this and let's see what's going on. We raise the hood again and as we are looking around I notice the battery is smoking and burping liquid out of the cells. My friend says, "Take off and go get a new battery. That one is about to blow!"

By the time I get to walmart a mile or 2 down the road it's starting to smoke under the hood. I jump out, raise the hood and disconnect the battery. Thank goodness, I knew the socket size I needed to save time.

The plastic top of the battery had begun melting into itself.

I've never seen such catastrophic failure and still be able to crank the engine. I wish I would have taken a picture but this is a decent representation.



So what caused this? The battery was 2 years and 11 months old. Was it charging the lithium battery powered light that did it? Did the guy checking it at the oil place short it out somehow with the testing equipment?

I feel like I was minutes away from a flaming truck on the side of the road.