cheepo car battery chargers

right??

and

Measure the o/c ac voltage from the secondary (each half of secondary). If your meter reads around 18V rms (or higher) then the dc rectified pulses will be sufficient to charge a 12V lead acid battery. If it doesn't measure at least 18V o/c per half secondary then it probably won't do the job.

Does the charger have an indicator showing when the thermal switch opens and closes? This will probably be a led which goes on and off during charging. If it does have such a led and it does go on and off then the charger is most likely working as intended.

These el-cheapo chargers are basically just junk and I wouldn't even look at them let alone buy one.

"lentildude" <

** The LED volt meter does not read accurately with no battery connected.

It needs it there to smooth the rectified AC.

Same for any "average responding " volt meter - it will read only 64% of the peak value when there is no smoothing.

Learn some basic AC / DC theory anytime, dude.

........ Phil

Just stop getting all theoretical and charge up your batteries.

It will work and work well.

Put it on a timer so you don't overcharge the battery.

Ross

Clip it onto a suitably rated electrolytic and measure the voltage again.

it's not providing 11.5V continuously,

the peak voltage is more like 16V, the diodes inside it will ensure that when its output is lower than the battery it doesn't discharge the battery.

I've been told they do.

--

Bye.
   Jasen

Thanks for feedback,

I just charged an electrolytic and measured 17.5v so those cheepo chargers do work!

The Optimate II I bought a couple of years ago seems to work well enough, I keep a spare motorcycle that's left behind the shed all year round which so far only gets an outing once a year for its MOT test, the battery gets brought indoors and de-sulphated as soon as winter ends and another charge at the end of summer just before the test, this has stopped the battery becoming scrap.

Its worth remembering that most cheap & cheerful chargers are "impedance wound" so the off load peak voltage will be somewhat higher than the correct charging voltage and drop considerably on normal load. This of course means that a normal power transformer will not be suitable for making a LA battery charger.

The Optimate charger claims a 20V desulphating phase current limited to

200mA, for reference the Yuasa "Little red battery book" recommends desulphating at 29V current limited to 1/3 of the Ah capacity rating, this book suggests that as the battery starts to draw charge current the terminal voltage should fall to the deep discharge value of 10.8V - at which point a fully automated charger should switch to constant voltage charging at the recommended charging voltage for the battery type (open & SLA differ). Its quite possible that a cheap charger with an off load peak voltage anything over 20V probably won't be far behind expensive chargers like the Optimate in terms of recovering mildly sulphated batteries.

Right, now charge your battery but don't leave the charger (still powered ON) connected to the battery when it is fully charged. Either disconnect the charger or do as RMD suggested - use a mains timer adapter.