New Life

A friend gave me an old Die Hard battery that he hadn't used for a couple of years. I used it all summer, but I could tell if it wasn't holding a charge well. Then a couple months later it gave out. I put a 60watt 110v light on it for about a week. Then I hooked up my 30-year-old Sears 6 amp charger which seems to have been one of the better ones, in its day. I noticed it pegged the ampmeter and then I heard a relay click off. Then it repeated. I thought it must be a wasted effort. I never charged a battery that pegged the ampmeter before and tripped the relay like that. Then I realized what was happening. It was spiking the high amperage into the battery to wake it up (from the dead, so to speak). Several hours later and I remembered it was still charging. I saw the ampmeter was feeding it a steady flow now and the needle was down to about one third or maybe a quarter of the scale.

It was a success. A breakthrough, at least something to start experimenting with now on those old batteries laying around. If batteries become scarce this could be an important survival skill. A friend in Germany, a mechanic who lived in Australia for 10 years and who rebuilt my Triumph for me when a piston rod broke, told me they saved all old batteries and sorted them by types. Then on slow days it was his job to cut the tops off with a hot knife and cut bad plates from the batteries and the ones that looked the best were rebuilt soldering in good plates from another battery which had become a parts source. My Dad told me we used to do that in the USA too, until better-cheaper batteries became available.

Offered by Darrell.