<VV> battery vents

[J R Read_HML]

I may not have the story exact on why the battery vents came about, but it 
goes some thing like this.  GM had come up with a new lighter weight fan 
made of essentially a plastic material that they called Delron.  This was to 
take the place of those heavy steel fans that were on the early cars.  About 
1500 or so of the fans had been made and many were installed on test 
vehicles.  I don't know if any of these ever got onto regular production 
cars or not and I don't know the exact time period when this took place, but 
maybe someone in VV can comment on those items.

Anyway, some of the testing took place in a cold climate.  Alaska? 
Colorado?  I don't know for certain just where.  One of the cars had a 
faulty regulator which was set a bit too high and was charging the battery 
constantly.  They had taken a long drive in several cars and the driver 
(tester) of the high charging car was sick and coughing and watery eyes etc 
by the end of the day.

After investigating the situation, it turned out that the acid fumes being 
kicked off by the constantly charging battery had reacted with the Delron 
fan resulting in formaldehyde fumes which got into the heater and therefore 
into the passenger compartment.  GM scrapped the Delron fan and came up with 
the magnesium one as the replacement. BTW, those are kind of fun in a camp 
fire (don't do this at home and if you do it anyway, DO NOT pour water on).

There was of course still concern over the potential of a cooking battery 
sending acid fumes to the passenger compartment, so the battery vent tubes 
were born.  I'm not sure if they stayed all the way to the end of 
production.  Someone with a '69 might be able to tell us if the holes are 
there on their car.

Anyone who has more specific knowledge on this than I, feel free to correct 
any misstatements I may have made.

Attachments (if any) are scanned with anti-virus software.

Later, JR

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Choy" <ronchoy at comcast.net>
To: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 8:39 PM
Subject: re: <VV> battery area question


> Our 65 came with battery caps that connected to two tubes leading to the 
> grommet and its holes. Funny, I don't remember that in our 68 and I think 
> I would have noticed. I think it came without tubes.  -ron 65,66
>
> _______________________________________________
> This message was sent by the VirtualVairs mailing list, all copyrights are 
> the property
> of the writer, please attribute properly. For help, 
> mailto:vv-help at corvair.org
> This list sponsored by the Corvair Society of America, 
> http://www.corvair.org/
> Post messages to: VirtualVairs at corvair.org
> Change your options: 
> http://www.vv.corvair.org/mailman/options/virtualvairs 
> _______________________________________________