To Flying Kiwi
Re-celling services are always likely to be more expensive than DIY from an existing battery, it's a matter of labour and company running costs as you've acknowledged.
The batteries are produced in the Far East by companies with very low running costs and low wages.
Re-celling here is done by companies with UK running costs and UK labour costs, and the saving from buying just the cells doesn't compensate. Indeed, those selling cells and cellpacks also have UK or similar costs which they add to the cell prices, hence their being so high. Even if given the opportunity they can't compete.
I think you are being disingenuous when claiming that your comment on spotwelding was as a response to Chris's question on cells, when you made clear with the quote extract that you were answering his request for if anyone had done this before, and anyway, his posting on separate cells came after your reply. Clearly you'd made an assumption about the content of my advice, and a wrong one at that.
I've put a lot of time and effort into researching this and finding the best possible solution, and always appreciate constructive criticism, but posting in threads with negative generalities which have no relevance to the answer given and put the enquirer off accepting valid and tested advice is destructive. Your repeating above the comment about spotwelding is what I'm talking about, as I previously pointed out, in the context of my re-celling article, it is not valid or useful in any way. The only possible effect it can have each time is to undermine and call into the question the advice being given. That seems to me to be your aim, since you went on to do it again in regard to my example re-celling service. Instead of accepting that as a valid example, you suggested a good battery specialist company would respond with much more competitive pricing. No they wouldn't, as you well knew from your comments on labour costs etc moments later. Again the effect of your comment was to call into question what I'd placed on my site, while avoiding any specific evidence in support of what you said. If you really thought a specialist company would do better, then post the details, we'd love to have them.
Where you have specific technical knowledge that you can use constructively to help solve problems, then that's extremely welcome, the more the better. But please, pack it in with the generalities when raising potentially critical comments on someone else's specifics. If you keep to equally specific valid criticisms you'll find me welcoming and receptive of them.
