On Tue, 24 May 2005 21:03:42 -0500, Jim Adney
wrote:

On Tue, 24 May 2005 00:34:18 -0500 none wrote:

I miss the days when you could buy a battery that was serviceable.
A heavy glass plate case with bolt on top and removable plates.
They would last forever as long as one was willing to do a bit of
service work.

I'm afraid I'm not old enough to have ever seen one of those. When
were they used?

They quit selling them somewhere around the late 40's, early 50's.
Many were still using them for some time after.
My father was an electrical engineer and we had them well into the
60's.
They kinda looked like an aquarium with a bolt on top, Which was made
out of something like bakelite.
You'd buy new plates and electrolyte unbolt the case and swap them
out.
The reason they discontinued their use in autos was for safety reasons
of course. One good smash up and you had acid soaked glass shards
flying around.
Still they'd have their uses in other applications. I'll be moving out
to the middle of nowhere soon and will have to generate my own power
so instead of buying dozens of sealed batteries for my generator setup
rebuildable batterys would make better sense.(I'll pull out some old
Audel's and read up on wet cell theory and design and have a go at
doing it myself.)

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Jim Adney
Madison, WI 53711 USA
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