Bongo Fury

I ordered two new batteries after the old girl was failing to start. I installed them this morning and when I tried to attach the negative there was a huge flash and half the terminal melted. I checked to see if I was still alive (I was). I then set out to work out what went wrong. I turns out I was trying to attach the negative to the positive terminal. I then felt incredibly silly. Not normally this silly I wanted to find out how I could have come to do this. Well, it turns out the terminals on the new batteries were on the opposite side of the old ones. I feel slightly less silly now but I want to now assess the damage and work out what to do next.

I'm assuming the battery with half a terminal missing is no good. (please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I'm hoping the other battery is still good. So it's only £80 down the drain, as opposed to £160.

If the other battery is still good, will it be discharged and need charging?

Could they not standardise the design of batteries so that mistakes like this do not occur?

Any advice on these points is much appreciated!
Thanks

I have seen this before from one online seller with a battery I bought.. lucky the leisure battery was for other purposes anyway
and not the Bongo (although I may wanted to have put it in the Bongo at some stage)

I hope that it has not damaged the electrics. I would not use a battery with a serious physical problem
on the vehicle. Cut your losses with that.

Fingers crossed, not sure how sensitive the electrics might be to reverse polarity.

Crikey.

That could have been a lot worse.

Problem is battery terminal placing is dictated by car manufacturers and depends where it is fitted and the cable runs.

Even if this could be standardised now it would be many years before batteries could only be supplied to the new standard, but I get your point.

But the terminal sizes are normally different ? The +ve is normally smaller so that the negative wouldn't clamp on and you always put the negative on last so that it can't be mistaken as well ?
I guess for the problem you report to happen you must also be a dual battery Northern Japan cold start setup?

I think I must be extremely lucky then - I took out the ruined battery, put the old one back in, and it started first time!!

Should I use it like this, or should I get another new battery? Is there a risk pairing an old battery with a new one? i.e. will the old one drain the new one and reduce life?

Thanks for your responses - much appreciated..

Personaly I'd bite the bullet and buy another new one.