I remember

[john1000uk]

I remember back in the 1970s? Lucas (uk) batteries that (fairs fair) were a good battery but unfortunately had no gradual failure slope. Instead were fine one day and completely and I mean completely dead the next day. Oh well happy times.

 

[Eclectic]

I worked for Lucas Service in the 70's, and at that time we used to receive the batteries in a dry state, and had to fill them with dilute sulfuric acid electrolyte and charge them.
The trick was to half fill them, leave for about 12 hours and then finish filling, leave for another 12 hours before charging. Batteries put into service this way lasted ages, but you always had to keep an eye on the apprentices cutting corners!

 

[EvTek23]

I can remember buying batteries from VW in the early 90's as a spare part from the service dept. Those too were delivered dry charged. There were 6 bottles of acid, one for each cell. You had to carefully fill and recheck the level in each cell, it took an age. I remember too that the battery took hours to "form up" before it had enough capacity to crank the engine over, as the battery seemed as poor as the one I took out in turning the engine over, the next morning however it was fine.

 

[john1000uk]

I worked for Lucas Service in the 70's, and at that time we used to receive the batteries in a dry state, and had to fill them with dilute sulfuric acid electrolyte and charge them.
The trick was to half fill them, leave for about 12 hours and then finish filling, leave for another 12 hours before charging. Batteries put into service this way lasted ages, but you always had to keep an eye on the apprentices cutting corners!

Happy days.