Woo woo...
Reading this thread reads right up there with the best of Heinlein and Crichton.
Ummmm...hate to break it to you but...
Not
Even
Close
All batteries of the 50's and 60's had the same percentage of Pb - Sb. 5% Sb
Then Delco Remy introduced the DELCOTRON. Pb - Ca. Lead calcium
From there things went downhill fast. Herb Tarklek and investors wrested the helm from the engineers. Then environmentalists jumped into the fray.
Cold Cranking Amps became king. Ampere Hours became outmoded.
More More More! Thinner Thinner Thinner plates. Not hard to figure out why. Thinly pasted thin grids are immeasurably easier thus more "productive" to produce. SARCASM Zillion Amps / Near translucent thin plates.
Wuuwee. Enter the Battery Council International
"Thou Shall Not Deviate! Produce Ultimate Recyclable Product!"
5% antimony 2% antimony 1% antimony mixes are harder to process than near alike alloy grids and plates.
H2SO4 must be inexpensive to recover and reprocess.
So the era of 5% antimony car jar batteries ended with a whimper.
Trojan was one of the last holdouts. But higher underhood temperatures, and automakers like GM Delco who brainfarted 15.0 volt alternator voltage regulators (like the 1116405) thinking "Oh looky here, our suckers, strike that, customers, will be FORCED to stick with our mega-priced calcium calcium DELCOTRON.
That same thinking brought forth the abortion grade Delco Voyager calcium calcium RV batteries. "Old Red Eye".
The 1116405 (1st true PWM controlled voltage regulator) boiled aftermarket batteries. Cables, hold downs and splash shields corroded. Batteries and customers fumed and NEW COKE 15 volt regulators vanished.
But it is the BCI who holds the industry standardization cards. THEY DO NOT WANT DEVIANTS in their recycle inventory. Pure lead? Oh, dream on...to fully extract 99.5% Pb is costly. Way way too costly for stockholders and bonus check golden parachute recipients.
The EPA jabbed them in the ass. So they sent battery manufacturing and product for recycling to Mexico. Let them deal with stunted IQ children and toxic waste sites. Wanna know why USA manufactured batteries cost a lot more? Read this paragraph again and again.
USA manufactured batteries cannot possibly compete price wise with burrito batteries. USA manufacturers are not stupid. They had to create a niche market for their auto/RV batteries. They may use recycled product but they can build a battery to higher standards (of course not all USA manufacturers strive for higher quality). But with NAFTA, follow the shell with the pea because now it's north of the border, now south of the border and on it's way back.
RAMCAR imports a significant percentage of its batteries from the Philippines. Oxide does the same with batteries from India.
Niche companies like Rolls & Surrette, insist on tradition. And meticulous engineering and production standards. X-ring standards are pricey to achieve and maintain. Compliance with wages and EPA standards is not cheap. Neither is purchasing virgin lead.
"Whoa! I gets ten years outta mah tires. If you don't, you gots a bigass problem I'm tellin' ya." Now is this a truly intelligent way to describe something?
We now resume normal programming. Brace yourself...
