Availability of acid for dry-charged batteries
 

Just received a 'Banner' 30Amp-hr battery from Moto**** today without any acid in- fair enough, they told me beforehand that they could not send it complete with acid. Sure, no problemo, I always get the acid from Trenholmes in the village and then stick it in the battery.

It arrived this morning. Oh, bugger, Trenholmes closed down a couple of months ago. Another local garage now tells me that they are not permitted to sell battery acid any longer because of sodding Health & Safety.

Is this true, is there any point wasting more time asking around? One garage told me I could just use the acid from the old duff battery if it wasn't dirty and then give it a good charge. Hmm, sounds dodgy to me.

Any suggestions?

You could pull it 'carefully' from another battery.

lead acid
 

unless the acid is contaminated eg with tap water or the battery has been boiled dry, I dont see why the old acid shouldn't work.
I use my local landrover non-francised spares dealer for new acid admittedly.
On a previous occasion i had boiled a battery dry due to reg/rec failure, I nicked the acid from an old landy battery and it certainly lasted a year or so..

Yee hah! got me some acid from Bangor, 30miles away. Hope it's fine tomorrow!

Thank you both for your replies. I have had some experience with handling battery acid while working for BT, and found the hard way how it effortlessly it can pepper a pair of jeans with holes with acid splashes. They looked fine till they came out of the washing machine after the next wash. It might be of interest that BT had the local water supply tested and they said it was OK to use that rather than go to the bother of getting distilled water to top them up. Of course, that only applied to the local supply and I've no idea where else that applied to.