With the exception of our drive-on alignment racks, all of the shop's lifts are powered by two car batteries. Every so often the batteries do need to be replaced and one of the lifts had been showing signs of weak batteries for a while now. Because it's been slow this month, we were pushing the batteries as long as we could until they would be unable to lift a car at a reasonable pace.

Apparently we pushed them too far. I had just set the lift for a 2012 Honda Pilot and was in the process of raising the vehicle for a tire rotation and oil change. About two feet off the ground, there was a very loud popping sound literally right next to my head because it's my habit to lean against the lift's power unit while raising a vehicle. Moving quickly away from the lift controls, uncertain what had just happened beyond something having gone horribly wrong inside of the lift's power unit. Took me about 30 seconds to realize I was still holding my left arm behind my back to press the raise button, despite now being 10 feet from the lift controls.

After getting my supervisor, there was a rather pungent smell of sulfur in the air as well as smoke coming from behind the access panel for the batteries, pretty much confirming a battery explosion. My supervisor said he wasn't going to pull the access panel off and I said neither would I. As far as I know, this is the first time this as happened.

I consider myself rather lucky not to have been dowsed in acid.