I relocated my battery to the trunk, put it in a NHRA approved box and discovered that the battery is puking acid in the box and it's dripping out around the hold down bolts. The car has a Powermaster GM one wire alternator and according to them is functioning properly. Now I need to rethink my battery selection.

The acid is definitely coming out the vents. The voltage tests I did were with the engine running at idle and probably 4k rpms.

I'll have to check the p/n, its a cs121 gm alternator. For some reason 6030 comes to mind, I'll double check though.

It tested 14.7-8v at the alternator at idle and 14.8 + at I'd guess 4000 rpms, at the battery it tested 14.5-6v at idle. When I called Powermaster I gave the tech the p/n for the alternator and asked what the idle output should be? after telling him what size pulleys I'm running he said 14.8v. Then I gave him what my voltage readings were and he told me that my charging system was working perfect.

This intrigued me so I sent an email to the Deka tech line asking about allowable charging voltages for the 24M7 and here is the response:

"Good morning, the operation should be 12.6 - 12.8 , when is charging 13.5 - 14.2"

From this I think you may be overcharging your battery. You may want to check with Deka yourself as I could have misrepresented something.

Make sure and use more than one ground strap from the battery to the body, I would run one #2 from the neg. post up to the block or tranny also

I'm not so sure that an automotive battery is the answer. 14.8 volts is a fairly high charging voltage. I would recommend you review the following document.

A GUIDE TO BATTERY CHARGING

An excerpt from that is "Although a battery is called a '12 volt' battery, its voltage varies from about 12.6 volts down to 10 volts when it is discharging and can rise to 15 or 16 volts during charging. It is very important, however, to limit the maximum battery voltage during charging otherwise the battery will be damaged. The battery voltage should not exceed 13.8 volts for long periods and 14.4 volts for short periods (8 hours maximum)"

be careful switching on and off an alt. field, it can act like a coil inducing a voltage spike on your ignition circuit. There is right and wrong ways to do it. Guess which way I came up with.

So you all are saying a gel car battery needs to be vented also? I`m asking because I don`t know. What about the ones that are sealing the small gel battery inside a old resto battery case like others here have done?

be careful switching on and off an alt. field, it can act like a coil inducing a voltage spike on your ignition circuit. There is right and wrong ways to do it. Guess which way I came up with.

i was strongly considering relocating the battery to the trunk of my charger, but seeing the inner fender under the battery tray is crusted up because of battery acid and gasses, thus needing repair, i'm now thinking i will modify that area for one of those light weight tiny AMG batteries.
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