Car Battery - Spilled Acid/Water

[skenk]

Hope it's ok to put this in this forum but . . .

I have spilled some acid/distilled water out of the side of two car batteries (well one is actually a leisure battery), one of them spilled in my van, i have rinsed the affected area and both batteries and wiped them down. We use the batteries for a small car stereo based soundsystem and 12v lights. They fell out of the wheelbarrow we were using to transport them back from the party in the woods (yes . . . it was a good weekend )

Questions are:

Can i just fill the batteries up with distilled water and carry on using them? or do they need a mix of sulphuric acid and water?

How badly will the acid affect the (already pretty rusty old transit) van?

Any help muchos gracias, especially re: refilling and reusing, transit is going to rot with or without the acid to help.

Tim

 

[neds]

You'll need Ionised water not just distilled. also I remember you could buy the tablets to top up the acid levels in the battery not sure if you can buy them any more.

 

[mikeyd]

I'm sure neds meant Deionised water.

Either would do, deionised is probably cheaper than distilled tough.
Normally when the level gets low it's the water in it that disappears, and the sulphuric acid stays behind so you just top up with water. However in your case you should really replace the acid but I suppose it depends how much is missing.
The important thing is that the plates are not exposed to air so I would say if you didn't spill too much just top it up with purified water to cover the plates. Or if you had another dead battery (It's usually the plates that die) you could use some of the electrolite from it (But be careful!)

Edit- As for the spill, if you rinced it all away then all should be well. If you watered it down and let it dry, then the water will evaporate and leave the pure acid behind. (I learned this once after working out why battery acid looked like it had done no damage to my boiler suit until it came out of the tumble drier)