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kryptonitewhite

Schumacher Electric auto battery charger

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Finally listened to you all and got a cheap charger at Walmart, 6A charge maintainer, microprocessor controlled, 72W 6amp fast charge 4A medium and 2amp slow 6V/12V automatic.

Hooked it up and let it sit over night. In the AM the remote unlock didnt work so I knew it wasnt charged. Looked at the charger and it said full charge. I unplugged it and tried to start it, dead. Reconnected, put back to fast charge, it started...the fan revved higher and higher then shut off. I unplugged and reset, put on slow charge, fan stayed low reve so I left it for 2 hours. Came back, said full charge, but was dead.

Gonna take the cheapie back today

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Get yourself a big ol' bastard like this -

101_0593.jpg

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Finally listened to you all and got a cheap charger at Walmart, 6A charge maintainer, microprocessor controlled, 72W 6amp fast charge 4A medium and 2amp slow 6V/12V automatic.

Hooked it up and let it sit over night. In the AM the remote unlock didnt work so I knew it wasnt charged. Looked at the charger and it said full charge. I unplugged it and tried to start it, dead. Reconnected, put back to fast charge, it started...the fan revved higher and higher then shut off. I unplugged and reset, put on slow charge, fan stayed low reve so I left it for 2 hours. Came back, said full charge, but was dead.

Gonna take the cheapie back today

CIMG6438.jpg

I have the marine version of that battery charger and it serves me well..

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maybe you have a bad battery.

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Sounds more like a dead cell in the batery than something being wrong with the charger. The thing wit a battery that has a dead cell, you will read a fully charged voltage, bur as soon as you try and draw any current the voltage can drop Down to almost zero

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mine always worked well.

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can you leave the batterys in the car and charge them all together? Or do you have to disconnect and do them all individually? I just disconnected the rear 2 and have them charging together in case the van has a leak/draw so theyre separated from the vehicle circuit now...will try that over night.

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pulled all three batts and brought them in, charger is on the starter batt, it kicks in for a few mins, then off for a few, I'll keep checking with the DMM...hope I'm getting somewhere!

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CIMG6453-2.jpg

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Looks like it could be a badd battery. I have to run some testing on mine. Gotta charge them overnight soon and see if everything is ok with mine.

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Is that battery realt reading 7 volts?! I'm not even sure you can recharge that without a high amperage charger

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so theres a little trick to getting completyely discharged AGMs to start taking a charge. The charger has 2 ways of shutting off, sometimes as soon as it starts charging the cooling fan gets louder and louder till it clicks and stops charging for a bit..then it kicks back in for a while and shuts off again, other times it thinks/says the battery has a full charge then you have to disconnect then reconnect until it kicks off again, process repeat. Once the battery gets a small charge then the process stops or becomes much less frequent and then it takes over a day to get over a 12V charge. So far I brought 1 battery back to life, the 2nd large 100aH is now starting to take charge...hasn't kicked off for a while. Tomorrow I will try to get the little starter battery going again.

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Good luck. Sounds weird.

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Sounds like you have bad batteries or a weak charger. I have 4 Odyssey deep cycle batteries for my boat that are 7 years old that are drained on a weekly basis during the summer. I use an Intella Power 60 amp converter and they charge back up every time.

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Looks like the batteries might be sulfated and or overly drained. If they stayed that way too long they could be ruined. I use a powersupply set to 13.8 to 14.2 volts when batteries are that low and many times won't start taking a charge for several hours then I switch it over to a CTEK charger after they start taking a charge. You must watch for heat and do not let them go off a powersupply unless you are there to check as a badly sulfated battery can over heat easily and also damage the powersupply. If it gets hot stop the charging. If you hear venting stop the charging.

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A battery maintainer is not a charger it can do more bad than good to the batteries. I was about to go that rout also but read the instructions in the store.

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