Evening star., 1922-02-05
TUNKED BATTERIES SALVAGED
AND SOLD AS NEW PRODUCT
Investigators Find Car Owners May IN
Some Instances Buy Back Their Own
Discarded Equipment

than probably and article on the
market. So far as the purchaser is
concerned, his eyesight and such
precautions as he can take of his
own stop with the box, and new
coat of paint can even make an old
box look new. and a new-looking box
may house a battery so debilitated. so
worn out, so much of an invalid,
that it hardly has enough strength
left to turn over an engine. let alone
last out a proper service.
In these days of low prices for
standard batteries, it is a foregone
conclusion that where you buy bat
terry five or six dollars less than the
standard price you are pretty likely
to be buying battery that Is not
new battery but a battery made up of
odds and ends of old batteries that
have been junked.
AS the plates are the backbone of
the battery, and really what consti-
tute the battery itself. is is. Of course,
in the plates that the inferiority of
abnormally low priced batteries exists.
Such battery may render service
for week or a month or more. de-
pending entirely upon what was left
in the salvaged plates, but it proves
an expensive as we'll as an unsatis-
factory one to the buyer, no matter
how small a price he pays.
This is the danger of the low priced
of it. The sad experience of a great
many motor car owners and drivers
corroborates 1t. Once they are vic
timized, they are forever strong for
the standard battery. but there is no
more reason for the person who has
used the standard battery getting
stung once than there is that he
should get stung buying a second
hand pair of shoes or a secondhand
raincoat.
There is more real reason to buy
a mended pair of shoes. because a
pair Of shoes can be mended; but a
battery that is a mere reassembling
Of batteries which have been tunked
can no more be made over than q
lame horse can be made well, or a
dead tree brought back to life. When
the life has gone out Of the plates
rial in the plates has run SO low that
it must be discarded by car owner,
that battery has nothing left in it
of any value to the car owner.
Cost at Any Price.
That you should pay fifteen or
twenty dollars for this kind Of bat
terry is exactly the same as buying
the corpse of a horse that has been
galvanized into a few hours of arti-
ficial life.
When you buy a standard battery
you buy a new battery-new in all
it's parts. 1t is priced to return pre-
sumably fair profit to the manu-
facturer. Incidentally, at the present
time. there may be a considerable
doubt with the manufacturer in re-
gard to this profit. But you get a
real service guaranteed, backed up
by a financial responsibility that will
not see the good name Of the manu-
facturer jeopardized.
When you buy battery made up
of a few new plates, and the balance
aged. debilitated plates. you pay the
seller an enormous profit, and you
get nothing but trouble in return.
There Is always safety in the word
standard" in connection with every
article, but nowhere is it of such
great value as in the automobile bat
terry. There is nothing that can
to you the condition, the
stored-up power, the value Of what is
within the box of a battery, except
the name on the outside of 1t.