"Marland" wrote in message
...


The battery takes a charge, but it must be the battery not holding a
charge. New battery time :-(

that or fix it. Self discharge can be caused by shed lead accumulating at
the bottom of the cells. Tip acid out, rinse repeatedly with distilled
water, return acid. Obviously the acid can eat you so various cautions
apply.

Did that long ago & the battery lasted years.


I was told do that by a work colleague who had been in the submarine
service in WW2 in an engineering rank.
Only did it once with a battery on my Riley1.5 ,sometime around 1974.
It did fix it for a while but wether it will still work on modern
batteries
which seem to have the plates much closer together I havent tried.
If the Ops battery is constructed like an original one he may be lucky but
I suspect compared to the car the battery is much younger and not so easy
to get the muck out.

And unless you have a source of free distilled water then the money
purchasing that may be be better put to buying a new battery which for a
moggy wont be too onerous at £50-£60 unlike the couple of hundred that
modern tailored batteries seem to be.

Mine arent, same £50-£60 price.