"Don't hope that events will turn out as you want. Welcome events in whichever way they happen; this is the path to peace." - Epictetus
I've been meaning to post about battery maintainers - "trickle chargers" for a while now. All batteries tend to self-discharge over time, and this eventually causes them to lose their capacity to deliver enough amperes to start an engine.
Allowing a standard lead-acid vehicle battery to sit at zero voltage -"deep discharge" - for long periods of time damages the battery irreparably. The plates in these batteries are thin and have a large surface area for maximum current delivery. They are pretty fragile, unlike a heavy-duty marine deep cycle battery.
I've bought a lot of Black and Decker trickle charge devices over the years. I try to keep the batteries of unused vehicles from deteriorating while they are in lay-up over the winter months. Even lawn mower batteries aren't all that cheap to replace.
Yesterday, the third one of six was found to be not working. These things don't seem to be very reliable at all. We wanted to start a car that had been left out over the winter and the battery was dead, dead, dead, with a trickle charger that was also non-functioning. I can't tell you how irritating it is to have a $25 charger fail and ruin a $150 battery. This has now happened three times.
I'm not too interested in determining the failure mode for these chargers. There are two in the trash right now that I could dissect - if I had the time for that. I'd suspect it's because they have an inexpensive switched mode power supply with a DC-DC buck converter that craps out over time.
What I'd like to locate is a transformer-based trickle charger, which should be a bit more robust than the solid-state version. Thing is, whey you online shop for these things, they don't advertise what technology they use to drop AC mains voltage down to 14-ish volts DC for trickle charging. So now I'm going to have to do some in depth research - which takes time I don't really have.
I keep seeing the word "smart" associated with trickle chargers. I don't think "smart" and battery charging belong in the same sentence. I just need a reliable source of DC current! This guy gets it. I don't have time to build half a dozen of these. Does anyone manufacture something like this?
In any event, I was attempting to push a charge into the most recently dead battery using another "Sears Automatic" battery charger that was given to me as a gift long ago. It would briefly turn on a light that said "charging", then that light would go out, and a red light came on that said "Check Battery" - and then it would shut off. "Smart" non-charging battery charger.
This thing belongs in the trash as well - I'm not sure it would even work for trickle charging. It won't attempt to apply voltage to the dead battery even in "manual" mode. It's pretty frustrating to have a bunch of chargers and not be able to charge a dead battery.
I ordered a legitimate transformer-based booster/charger - a "stupid charger". It should almost be possible to weld with this thing. The only switches are to select boost voltage (the transformer taps), and to set the charge timer. Brute force charging has its charms. Still going to have to replace those batteries though :(
EDIT: It's here, it's heavy, and it's going to be feared by batteries everywhere.
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