The battery on my Ducati 916 blew up. I was riding and I noticed an acid smell when I was waiting at a traffic light. I stopped and took the side panel off and the battery had cracked near one of the filler holes and was throwing out acid. It was a complete mess. I got the motorcycle home and replaced the battery. The rectifier has cone wrong which must be what caused it so I replaced that too.

Is there anyway I can prevent this happening again? It could have damaged my motorcycle completely, lucky for the Ducati's quick-remove fairings, the damage was limited.

I've heard of this happening a couple of times so it's not a freak occurrence. Both times the cause was blockages in the fuel pump. This meant it was hard to turn and drew more current, putting a strain on the electrics which resulted into the battery problem. Check that – it may well need some cleaning.

Quote by: Hall

The battery on my Ducati 916 blew up. I was riding and I noticed an acid smell when I was waiting at a traffic light. I stopped and took the side panel off and the battery had cracked near one of the filler holes and was throwing out acid. It was a complete mess. I got the motorcycle home and replaced the battery. The rectifier has cone wrong which must be what caused it so I replaced that too.

Is there anyway I can prevent this happening again? It could have damaged my motorcycle completely, lucky for the Ducati's quick-remove fairings, the damage was limited.

Thank Ducati for fast removable fairings. and you got to it time to avoid a major mess of acid on fairings and metal. Good to see you did the obvious check and changes plus Wallace has a good point about current draw and a blocked pump. My question is what battery did you have in it and what do you have now?

If you haven't done this, I personally would go for a gel cell, maintenance free type of battery eg: Yuasa YTZ-12S or YTZ-14S. I am a huge fan of these batteries and can't say enough about how robust they are.

Yuasa YTZ-12S http://store.yuasabatteries.com/product ... 1717.0.1.1
Yuasa YTZ-14S http://store.yuasabatteries.com/product ... 4514.54515