RE: scary find in the shop today
I don't think so, every corner with the spring (-) side is melted, not eaten away from acid, no evidence of acid coming out either, just condensation and electrolysis type corrosion.
What looks like happened is it shorted, got hot, melted the plastic to the point it lost good contact with one cell, but still enough to conduct some voltage. When I check the packs voltage at the lead it was under 1 volt, but I test each cell individually their all around 1.3 to 1.4 volts