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From: ijk@hropus.UUCP (Ihor J. Kinal)
Newsgroups: net.auto,net.auto.tech,net.consumers
Subject: Maintenance-Free Batteries: adding water to extend life
Message-ID: <216@hropus.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Jan-86 10:32:52 EST
Article-I.D.: hropus.216
Posted: Thu Jan 16 10:32:52 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jan-86 00:44:54 EST
Distribution: na
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 49

Recently, my wife's car's battery started to fail to hold a charge
real well.  After getting a new battery, I took a look at the old
battery: it's a maintenance-free Delco 50, about 6-7 years old.

This battery has no old-style battery caps; instead, it has 2
plastic covers.  Prying off these covers, I found battery caps 
that were glued on to the tops of the ceels, plus little holes to
discharge charging gases.  MOST of the cells were totally dry:
IN FACT, I managed to get almost 2 quarts of water back into the battery.

I'm not sure if the battery is salvageable - it still refused to take
much of a charge, but I'll try hooking some lights to it and
seeing how much capacity is left.

THE POINT of this article, is that maintenance-free batteries can
need water over their life-time.  What can the typical consumer do??
I'm not sure, but here are some thoughts.

1).  Buy only normal batteries, and make sure you add water periodically.
Disadvantage: most top of the line batteries are now maintenance-free -
if you want the added starting power, you can't get it.

2). Buy maintenance free batteries with open cells & covers.  I have
an 8 year old Sears Die-Hard with this construction.  Unfortunately,
most netters have had bad experiences with Die-Hards (I seem to be
in a minority).  And I don't know of any other maintenance-free
batteries with such covers.

3).  After the warranty on your battery is expired, you may want to
consider taking the caps off (if you do, please be careful; wear
eye-shields, etc, since battery acid is fairly strong stuff).
You can probably glue the covers back on, or perhaps throw them
away, and install individual battery caps.  If your friendly
auto store doesn't carry them, J.C. Whitney does.

4).  The preceding applies ONLY to wet-type maintenance free batteries.
A new type of battery is hitting the market, where the electrolyte is
more paste type (e.g., the TORQUE STARTER).  These can probably be
recognized by the lack of such plastic covers (also, the  TORQUE
STARTER states it can be mounted in any position - you can't do that
with other batteries, because the acid would leak out).  I believe
that Rickels (a store chain that may be local to NJ) has a CHAMPION
battery on sale for $49.95; it looks like a paste job also.
MAIN DISADVANTAGE of these batteries is their very limited warranty
(1-2 years).

I hope this article is of some help.
Ihor Kinal
ihnp4!houxm!hropus!ijk