Have you ever seen an egg frying on a sidewalk? Neither have I, but the heat in South Florida is more than capable of just burning that egg into charcoal. So, now, imagine your car being surrounded by this heat, solar rays, and being the home to a box with fast mini controlled explosions. All of this happening and you can bet your butt that your car battery can feel it as well. Before we head into how the heat here, South Florida, can affect your battery, we have to talk about the anatomy of a car battery to get a deeper understanding.
The Anatomy of a Lead-Acid Battery.
It’s easier to think of most of the components in your car like 3d shapes but made with a specific goal in mind. In this case, a car battery is just a box to start your car. On top of this box there’s two metal cylinders. One for positive and the other for negative. Pretty simple and next up is where the magic lies. The insides of this box is filled with stacked metal plates in an interconnected pattern connected to the two cylinders mentioned before but we still need one more major component to have this sparky energy flow in and out of your battery. This component is an electrolyte mix. This is usually created with a specific ratio of distilled water, sulfuric acid, and metal sulfates. This acid mixture combined with the lead metal plates, appropriately named lead-acid batteries, creates a flow of energy and stores it for a period of time. If you want an in depth overview of the car’s charging system: car battery, alternator, and starter. Stay tuned to our next blog post.
The Silent and Invisible Killer.
If an egg can fry up on the sidewalk due to the outside temperature, then what would happen to a cup of water left outside. It would most likely evaporate. We learned this like in third grade but science doesn’t stop even if you graduate from school. The electrolyte mix inside a car battery has a small percentage of water to dilute the sulfuric acid. Just like water left under the scorching sun, leaving your car outside under the same scorching sun will evaporate the water inside your car battery. Then what’s left is a battery filled with acid that will chew up the lead plates in the battery, which kills it.
Pop Rocks?!
If you’ve been under your car hood quite a few times and see a green fluorescent powder coming from your battery terminals. Do Not Eat It! It’s not sour-apple flavored candy. This is a corrosive powder due to a chemical reaction of the sulfuric acid inside your car battery to the outside air. If a particular day is more humid, then it can cause your car battery to release gas that creates this reaction. Leaving this corrosion on your battery will eventually kill it. It’s a good idea to get a wire brush and an alkaline solution to clean off this corrosion. What? You don’t know what an alkaline solution is? We can make a whole post going in depth with chemistry with an alkaline solution. To make it easy, this solution is made with baking soda and salt, which will neutralize that sulfuric acid corrosion.
The climate here in South Florida, whether it is Broward, Miami-Dade, or West Palm Beach County, will always be hot and humid (only if climate change ends up turning Florida into the South Pole.) Knowing these little things can help you understand your car battery and better maintain your car because of how the market of cars is right now. It hurts just to fix your car.
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