Good manual battery chargers?

[edgephoto]

Smart chargers are ok but many times you need an old school dumb charger. Just be careful using one with modern electronics. Some old school ones put out 18 volts and can cause damage to electronics in modern cars.

When a battery goes dead it is permanently damaged. Will it work for a while, of course but it will never be as good before it went flat.

How much you want to spend is what it comes down to.

 

[hey mister]

I’m still in this boat, paddling in circles lol. Lowe’s has a Schumacher brand in stock, but the reviews are terrible. I wonder if their quality has fallen off? I have a four wheeler battery that the smart charger wouldn’t recognize to kick on. I borrowed an older Schumacher charger this afternoon, and it didn’t hesitate to start cooking my battery. So still looking, but willing to spend some money on a good one this time to have one that will last. And actually charge a battery. I can’t understand the point of a smart charger that’s too dumb to recharge a battery……

"Smart" whateve...
Alot of it is just marketing jive. Stick a "smart" label on a butter knife and they wil out sell their twin with no label.

 

[90Supurban]

I often use an adjustable DC power supply that lets you set the peak volts AND amps. They also display the volts and amps to let you see what is going on with the battery’s acceptance of the charge. Another benefit is that, if you have a battery that you can add water to, you can do an equalization charge like is common with off-grid lead acid batteries. Started out using an industrial quality used one, found on ebay, but it is a rack mounted design and not so portable. It still works great but lately I have been using cheapo china ones in the 10 amp capacity that are smaller and more portable. Probably around $50 or so, but I have fried one of them so far. Also have used it for electrolytic rust removal on metal parts. Wish I could find a used quality one of similar size that wasn’t hundreds of dollars.

Lead acid 12v batteries need to be held at about 14.5 volts until their amperage acceptance falls below a certain percentage of battery capacity before they are considered fully charged. 13.5 volts is considered a float charge, which just doesn’t allow the battery to self-discharge. Cold temperature increases these voltage requirements a bit, maybe up to 15v when below freezing.

 

[90Supurban]

Here is a similar one from a quick search.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07512KQDW/

A quick note, the cheap one I am using has a warning in the instructions, to NOT power on or off with the load connected, so I wrote a reminder with a sharpie on the top. Guess the additional protection circuitry was too expensive to incorporate. It also has cheapo connections to the banana plugs, which I soldered.

 

[dusterdude]

I have two or three schumachers,they work well