Heads up, Battery charger.

[BAZ Senior]

I have just noticed Aldi are selling their battery chargers again. for the price these are an excellent bit of kit for charging your power packs, and leisure batteries. They can be left on indefinitely and will maintain the battery.

ALDI - Thursday Special Buys 6th October 2011

[Celeste]

Thanks for the heads up

[brantuk]

Ta Martyn - just the business for charging that leisure battery you gave us

[red dwalf]

Nice on Martin, I be down to our local Also tomorrow

[red dwalf]

just managed to get the second to last charger in the shop,just put it on the maplin power pack, trickle charge, was showing just over 13 volts then left the light on for a few minutes and it went down to 10.5 volts, lets see if this sorts the battery out, if not it`s in the bin

[BAZ Senior]

Mines stuck on my mates Harley at the moment. He swears by a charger called Optimate, which can also be left to get on with things, but it looks like it has been playing up, now he's swearing at it.

When I put mine on, it showed the battery was discharged completely, so it's now trying to bring it back to life.

What you had there Rob was what is known as float voltage, it looks OK just after being charged up, but in a short time after a minimal load is put on shows what the battery actually has, and 10v is looking poorly.

[red dwalf]

Does that mean It's had it ? Or can something be done.

[BAZ Senior]

If you have a multimeter, get it to show dc voltage and connect it to the battery. Then put the lamp on and see how much the voltage drops. If it drops below twelve volts after being fully charged it's probably had it. The batteries in the power packs are usually cheap Chinese ones, it may be possible to get a new battery to replace it so you can still use the boost start on the car.

Don't forget that if you do this, connect the power pack, and leave it connected around ten minutes, so that it transfers charge to your car battery. If you try and start the car straight away it draws directly off the power pack battery, and this is likely to kill the power pack battery, as they are sealed lead acid batteries and not able to provide that amount of current draw.

[Stephen]

Hmm, thanks for the indirect reminder. Just clicked it's been about two months since I charged my powertank!!