Southern Comfort, Did the plates get exposed due to lack of water? If so, that portion of them may be toast. Don't let it happen again, on these or succeeding
batteries. If it's too difficult to easily check and fill your
current batteries, you might consider zero
maintenance ones such as
AGM or gel batteries. See other
forums (fori?) for details. You can buy an inexpensive battery capacity tester at Harbor Freight to check them under load (cool tool to have, anyway). It will give you an idea, at least, if there is sufficient life remaining in your
current bank. Everyone needs to screw up before truly
learning something new, at least the mortals among us. BTW, the putrid stench is largely the sulfides on the plates or in the electrolyte. It's just part of the joy of lead-acid batteries. At least, they don't burst into flames like some computer batteries.