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.