Ken, meeksman as in Meeks Building materials???

Your Sperry DVM is not a loaded ESC meter. These devices are able to place a fixed load on the battery while checking its voltage, typically the loads are .25/250mA, .5/500mA, 1.0A and 1.5A dependent on the specific meter.

A four cell battery at 5.17V does not sound to far off, BUT as I mentioned your reading the voltage without a load, so its static voltage and this is of little value when attempting to evaluate the batteries condition.

C&H Ignitions can draw as much a 8.0 amps peak when charging the coil according to the engineer that designed it... So the question is will your battery provide at least 4.8 volts under a one amp load or better???