Many years ago I had a battery in my then Superbird from Antique Auto Battery that seemed to "give up". At the time, a friend's father ran a battery company and looked at the battery. At least one of the cells (this is long ago so I'm working from memory) had gone bad and the battery needed to be replaced. I contacted the company who suggested I bring it to Spring Carlisle for them to see it.

I carried that stinking battery all over Carlisle until I found them, and they said that there was no warranty (it was a couple years old) but they could put a chemical into the battery to "bring it back". Since my friend had told me it needed replacement, not some magic cure...I asked what else could be done. They repeated that this chemical was the fix and other than that there was nothing they could do.

I got a Carlisle directory and found the New Castle Battery company. I bought a new battery from them and have never gone back to the Antique Auto Battery company.

Since then, New Castle has been bought by another firm, but their TurboStart batteris are still tops in my book. They've been around for well over 10 years that I know of. My '72 has one of their AGM batteries.

I do use battery maintainers on all my cars that are parked for long periods. I've even made up cigarette light adapters for the Vipers so that I don;t have to open the hood to hook them up.

Battery Tenders are expensive, but I've found a maintainer at Wal-Mart by Shumacher that's about $20 and works very well.

I know some folks have very good service from batteries without a maintainer...but I beleive in their use, expecially in newer cars with parasitic draw from electronics.