It's no good having good batteries and a poor charger.
This looks a good charger (Maha) and comes with 4 good batteries.
£40 from Amazon link

Also available from Maplins at the same price.

It's a very simple fix with the Helios and fully reversible. You just need the insulation off a a piece of copper wire. Don't glue anything it could fall off and ruin your camera.

This is French, but the photos are easy to follow.
http://chris.stingray.free.fr/Tuto/Modif_H44M4/Pinoche_H44M-4.html

Old pre-sets are probably better for video or remove the ball bearing from the aperture ring on an old 50mm etc.

For a proper de-click job go to link

There's also a write up on this blog link

Midsummer day isn't actually midsummer..... we don't get
any summer anyway

I've never fitted shims, but If I were to try them. I'd use a
2x Refconverter so that I could see the screen more clearly
for MF.

Interesting looking bird and well captured. Mike is
right about the sharpening It's made a big
difference

I think you need to upgrade to XP

Some nice shots there John. It looks to be having a good time

Sorry got a bit confused there.... It was alkaline batteries in the camera body that weren't recommended, the lithiums wouldn't fit because the 4 batteries are kept separate.

They (3v Lithiums) came out around 1978/79 when the price of silver had shot up, so it was later than most of the Pentax cameras. I always thought they were introduced as a straight substitute. The ES took a 6v Silver PX28 which had a Lithium equivalent. I can't remember anyone saying it couldn't be used.

It seems the ESII takes 4 separate batteries so Lithiums aren't usable anyway. But they should be SILVER!

The MEF came out about 4 years later and I bought one an I was surprised that it said in the manual that Lithiums couldn't be used, possibly because of the batteries in the lens as well.

The Super-A manual says that they (Lithiums)can be used in that camera.

Oddly the ME-Super came with silver batteries, but the MX came with alkalines.