From the picture you can see what has happened. The battery box filled with water and then froze. I know there are two vents on the cover and this appear as the only place the water could have entered. There are no exit holes. Once I extracted the battery and repaired/replaced the fuse wire I decided to drill two 1/2" holes in the battery box bottom. Has anyone else experienced this or see a way to prevent it other than drilling the holes?
Yes, several others have posted on here the same thing. You did the common solution.
Carl
This happened to me too, except mine didn't freeze.
We had driven through rain bands of Hurricane Nicole and the water covered the 20 amp in-line fuse and popped it. I opened the box and it was full of water. I pulled the battery and drilled some drain holes too.
We picked up our Scamp at Backus on September 22 this year. I wonder if they got in a batch of battery boxes that were not drilled. If you picked up your Scamp recently, you might want to check your box for water.
This happened with my 2008 16'. Water puddled up on top of the battery, flowed into the battery vents, and overfilled the battery. One day when it was raining I noticed that water was running off the roof and ricocheting off the belly band and landing right on the battery box. So in addition to drilling drain holes in the box I put an EZ gutter over the front window. I also put a small dowel over the vents and made a bridge over them with electrical tape. The vents can still breathe along the dowel. That was several years ago and have had no trouble since.
Eric
The typical battery box is designed to contain any spilled contents to protect the vehicle/boat/rv from acid damage and does not have holes in th bottom on purpose. In our situation with the box out side in the weather bottom drain holes seems the best solution. The top fits loosely so plugging any top holes would likely be ok if their are any.
2019 Scamp 13 standard