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Another possibility is that the battery has a shorted cell. You didn't say when the battery was overflowing, so "Consider the Following..." I had this problem with one of my pickup trucks last fall. When a battery fails in this manner, the electrical system exibits symptoms of overcharging (such as electrolyte bubbling out of the battery caps,) and the machine won't start the next morning because the battery appears to be dead. With this type of failure, it can take a little head scratching (or a voltmeter across the battery when the tractor is NOT running,) to figure out what's happening. * With one cell shorted, the result is that you now have a 4.5 volt or 10.5 volt battery rather than a 6 or 12 volt battery.
* Because the charging system expects a 6 or 12 volt battery, it overcharges the "new" lower voltage battery which resulted from the cell failure, and electrolyte spews out of the caps as it overheats.
* When you go to start the machine, there isn't isn't enough energy because of the shorted cell and the damage caused by the overcharging. In short, the charging system and the battery need to match each other. The symptoms you've described could result from a failure of the charging system that puts too much into the battery, -OR- a failure within the battery which makes it "smaller" than the charging system expects. In my opinion, that's where you should start your troubleshooting procedures. I think it's unlikely that you have a bad alternator diode or stuck relay in a generator regulator. Those problems usually just discharge the battery and wouldn't explain the electrolyte overflow. Hope this helps if you haven't already fixed the problem. Bob G.
Colorado PS: If the battery is the problem, please remember to ask your battery dealer to recycle it through proper channels. Because of the lead content, they're considered to be toxic waste and shouldn't be just chucked into the nearest dumpster.
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