Car battery acid spill in back seat if car

talking about matching seats… go to car-part.com and search… I’m sure you will find matching color and such!

ebay is perfectly fine too, may be cheaper… but it’s a game of chances

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+1
While the OP can’t turn back the hands of the clock, I have to wonder about the thought process that was involved when he decided to place an acid-filled battery on a cloth seat that was not perfectly level, rather than on the floor.

:thinking:

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Know what you mean about the holes I remember one time I had a load of swimming pool chemicals I don’t remember what the chemical was but ii was a white powder that got on my pants when I left and was driving down the road my pants started to disintegrate.

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Sorry that occurred, frustrating. A replacement seat is definitely the best solution… You may have a problem with some of the acid getting on the carpet below the seat too. You might be able to address that – once the seat is removed – by thoroughly wetting the carpet down then using a wet/dry shop vac to pull the water & acid out. May have to repeat that a number of times. Be sure to clean & rinse the shop vac tub afterwards. BTW, whenever carrying a battery in the car good idea to place it in a plastic tub.

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To remove a rear seat cushion,you generally have to push the cushio0n back HARD, then up.

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Unfortunately it was a quick choice, i was in a hurry to run some errands and i had stuff in the floor board. I set it in the seat as evenly as possible and ran to so some stuff before places closed and ran out of time to return the unneeded battery that day. I forgot that it was back there after that- until i saw it had fallen over- my car had a really weird smell and upon further investigation i found the battery on its side, and the seat soaked in fresh acid. It was still wet thats how i knew had just happened probably the night before heading home from work. I know it was a poor choice on my end, but I clearly have learned my lesson!!

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If you would have caught the spill right away, there would have been minimal damage.

But not only did the acid soak the seat, but it also soaked the floor below the seat with a pool of acid.

And when you drove the vehicle,that pool of acid sloshed back and forth when cornering, and probably spilled into the back seat foot wells when braking, and ran under the rear carpet.

What you need to do is pull the back seat out so you see what the acid came in contact with.

Is the fuel pump access from under the back seat? Did the acid come in contact with any wires? Did it come in contact with any body plugs?

I’ve seen this type of thing happen before.

And sulfuric acid doesn’t reveal it’s damage right away.

It occurs over time.

The vehicle I saw this happen to eventually ended up in the junk yard because the cost to repair was more than the vehicle was worth.

Tester

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When I was a little kid (1960 or so…), I and my friends often hung out at a local gas station where we went for a soda out of their soda machine, get FREE air for our bike tires, and to just hang out with the mechanic as he worked…

There was an old stack of car batteries against the wall of the garage and we often sat on it. It did not take long before our mothers found that our jeans were developing holes in the seat…

With that being said, I advise you to quickly get rid of that battery acid drenched seat. Are you going to let your family, friends, or animals sit back there where the acid will slowly do its nasty??? Anyone/anything that is slightly damp (rain or swimming) sitting back there will find the dampness will reactivate the acid.

Get rid of that back seat!

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Thanks for the comment and concerns! I actually moved out of state away from all family and friends so i would definitely not be having anyone sitting back there if i was to leave the seat there. But I’m actually going to be pulling it out today and drenching the entire floor board with baking soda and pressure washing the seat to see if it will help. If it doesn’t i’ll be replacing the seat as a whole. As well as tge seat belts and anything the Acid could have came in contact with.

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Spilled battery acid in the boat, baking soda then hosed it down, no long term effects, so maybe a wash with baking soda and water could help prevent damage beyond the seats

I assume there weren’t any lasting ramifications from sitting on the batteries? :grin: You maybe noticed though that all of the concrete/blocks were damaged where the batteries sat.

As far as trying to clean foam, much of the car seats are dense foam. It might be possible but my experience with trying to just get mildew out of foam is pretty impossible, let alone acid.

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No lasting effects, do you know what patches on the butt of your pants do for your “street cred?” Actually, this was around 1958 and I and my friends were probably 8 or so, so we actually did not have anything to worry about that…

As for the garage, it had been there for years and years. They did not have a Lift, when they needed to work on the underside of a car, they drove it over the “mechanic’s pit” and worked on it that way. If they had to work on the underside with wheels lifted, they put a small jack under the car. So, as for the “concrete/blocks being damaged,” the whole place was damaged… But we did not care.

What made this place special was that Buck, the owner, and Leo, the mechanic, never yelled at us for being there, (What, No OSHA…). When our bikes got flat tires, they fixed them free. We often earned some spending money by sweeping up or carrying out trash. Sometimes we were paid to go get them a pack of cigarettes or ride down to a local restaurant and pick up their “sack lunches.”

They also talked to us, not as if we were kids. They explained what they were doing. I learned to gap spark plugs before I was 10-years old. My next-door neighbor’s, college student, son, who drives a beefed up Jeep Ridgeline, doesn’t know the difference between a spark plug and an oxygen sensor…

When my friends and I get melancholy about days gone-by, Leo and Buck are among some of the folk we reminisce about and say, “Remember when…”

Oh darn, I’ve got to share this “Remember when” with you. I, Mike and Ricky, (don’t worry, you don’t know them…) were hanging out at the garage and Leo had just finished working on a car. He backs it out and parks it out front. We followed him out and as he gets out, he locks the doors, but as he is closing the driver’s side door, he noticed his work sheet on the dash. The door is already moving to close and he quickly jams his fingers in to stop it, but it’s too late, the weight of the door and it’s momentum is too great for his feeble effort at stopping the door and it closes and locks. He yells with the sudden pain of having his fingertips stuck in the door. But, as he reacted to the pain, he drops the keys. We are startled at what just happened and just stare (remember, we’re only 8 years olds…). Leo regains his senses and tries to pull his fingers free, but they will not come. He then tries to reach down onto the ground where the keys are lying, but he can’t reach them. He then calls to us to get the keys, but by now, he does not seem to be in pain, just stuck and we start laughing and running around… He now cursing so we decide he’s now pretty mad, so we go and get Buck, who comes out and starts laughing at the sight of Leo stuck to the car. Anyway, Buck gets the keys, unlocks the door, and frees Leo. As it turned out, Leo’s fingers were only sore, not crushed or broken, not even cut… It was a couple of days before we went back and even Leo admitted it was pretty funny…

You need to physically remove the seat, possibly the carpet, and anything else the acid may have gotten to right away. Sulfuric acid will chemically burn, degrade, or corrode anything it touches, and the fumes from anything you might have missed will migrate everywhere, possibly affecting switch and socket contacts (think of those pennies) and weakening nylon (seat belts). I recall hearing about a high rise window washer whose safety belt failed while he was clipped in high on a building - he’d been storing it in the trunk of his car, which also held the car’s battery, and over time it was rotted by the fumes.

This is one of the many many reasons I don’t buy used cars.