rotten egg smell on brand new battery

[bikener]

I just bought a brand new battery for my 1990 accord. I changed it because i cracked the case on my other battery because i over tightened the harness. Just today it started smelling like rotten eggs and smoking. Is it possible that my alternator is overcharging because my other battery was fine until i cracked it. I read that maybe it has a faulty cell so the alternator thinks its not charged when really all the good cells are charged. could the battery be grounding out on something?? What could be the problem??

[wed3k]

rotten eggs is the unburnt fuel in your cat.

bust out a multimeter on the battery terminals and read the voltage while the car is off, running and engine revving.

[93accdpj]

rotten eggs is the unburnt fuel in your cat.

bust out a multimeter on the battery terminals and read the voltage while the car is off, running and engine revving.

I have seen it before. Just put a multimeter on your battery, and fire her up. Close to 14.5 is where you should read. If its 15 volts or higher the regulator is shot no matter what the battery condition is. The alternator is regulated to a certain voltage. When the battery is low you are still regulated to that voltage, but you are maxxing amperage output from the alt. This is why alternators can fail when you jump you jump start a dead bat, at night, and drive off with the JL's bumpin.

[Accrdwgnguy]

Buying a quality battery also helps. Not a walmart or autozone batt, I know money is tight, but those batteries don't last and they will not replace them when they crap out a year later. Go to Napa or Sears, and if you go to Sears get the expensive one.

[cloudasc]

I use Interstate batterys, i've drained one beyond the recovery point trying to crank over my 85 rx7 back in the day, it had been almost 18 months, I took the battery back to an interstate dealer, showed the original purchase reciept from another vendor, and they gladly replaced my battery free of charge.

In reality there are only 3 real manufacturers/sources of batterys. Google it, and you'll learn alot.

Also, the rotten egg smell does mean that your catalytic converter is going bad, the fact that the smell is strong in the engine compartment I suggest also checking for any exhaust leaks, inlcuding the notorious casting flaw crack that develops on a high percentage of cast manifolds for our motor.

Also recently I had to replace my alternator, when the oem one went, my battery light came on, so I drove it to the nearest firestone to have them diagnose the problem. They diagnosed the alternator as not charging, so they replaced it, about 500 miles later, my battery light came on again, this time because the voltage regulator at idle was putting out 18.5 volts, while at load it was nominal. So most overvoltage problems would cause your battery light to come on (provided it and its sensors are working properly)

[Shag Wagon]

Alt is shot. I had this problem with my Nissan when it was over charging the battery. The smell made one person puke in the Wal-Mart parking lot. You are actually smelling sulfer. Replace the alternator and call it a day.