Defective battery charger

Weldon wrote:
No sir the gel cell was not dead as mentioned. On a previous post someone said I should use one of the $13. chargers for the gel cell which I did and it worked. Unfortunately the schumacker charger is still on the blink.

If yours is the old school transformer style you may have damaged the output circuit breaker and or fuse able link between the transformer and diodes which is inside the charger. What happens is the charger may have been going into over current continually which makes the breaker cut in and out. Do this enough in a short amount of time and the breaker wears out.

Or in some cases some chargers use a light gauge fuse "link" which blows to protect the charger from burning up and causing a fire in the event the diodes short..

Keep in mind for future references..

Don't "short" the leads together to see if it "sparks".

Don't use car charger to charge little batteries.

Little batteries require little chargers, do not attempt to use chargers not designed for that battery.

Little batteries do not like "fast" high current charging and bad things can happen..

Newer fancy three stage chargers will not charge a dead battery (IE less than 10V for a 12V battery).

Without knowing the model number it is all guesses as to what you have.. But most chargers are not designed to be repaired so if you "can open" it, be careful since there will be some line voltage inside!

If you have a Harbor Freight store handy, they often have car chargers on sale...

No sir the gel cell was not dead as mentioned. On a previous post someone said I should use one of the $13. chargers for the gel cell which I did and it worked. Unfortunately the schumacker charger is still on the blink.

Weldon wrote:
yes it had a bit over 11 volts.

11V on a gel battery means it is DEAD, TOAST, NO GOOD especially if the battery has been allowed to set more than a day at that voltage.

Just because you used a car charger in the past to charge that battery doesn't mean that it was GOOD for the battery.

Doing so will shorten the battery life with in a few charge cycles to the point of no return.

The max charging current of a gel cell that size is 500 milliamps, even the small 2A-6A car chargers will severely over charge that battery within a hr or so.

When that happens there is a pressure build up in the battery. When the pressure builds it is vented.

When it vents you lose the moisture which is in the "gel".

Lose enough moisture and the battery is now a door stop (you can not put the lost water back in).

If you are lucky the battery does not overheat and or rupture in the process (I have had gels when they went bad (one cell shorts and the rest of the cells over charge)over heat and swell up, pretty scary to say the least.

As I mentioned in other posts, do not use a car charger to charge these small gel type batteries. The proper charger is $13 and will give you maximum charge with out damaging or harming the battery. Not to mention the most life of the battery.

I typically get 6-7 years out of gel cells which are in my UPS units which have proper charging systems built in throughout my house so there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to get the correct charger and get long battery life.

yes it had a bit over 11 volts.

Did the camera battery have enough voltage to get the charger working???

Thanks.

No sir, it was not tried on a RV battery. It was used in the past on a gel cell and it did work properly.

Since he left out the game camera originally, I thought he meant he tried the charger on that as well as an RV battery. Could use a bit of clarification here.

I feed 'em rope. They can do their own hanging if they simply insist on it.

2oldman wrote:
Is this thread now about a game camera battery or an RV battery?? We already know the OP's meter is set correctly.

The thread is about a car battery charger not charging a GAME CAMERA BATTERY, thread never was about a RV battery and the OP LEFT out that info in the very first post but later included it..

Weldon responded on 2/01/14 at 3:27 P.M. with the following..

"I put the charger on a 12v 6 amp battery for a game camera, left it on for a couple of hours. There was zero improvement in the batteries voltage after the charge.
Thanks for the comments!"


As far as the OP setting the meter correctly to DC volts, I am a bit skeptical about that too boot since the OP didn't realize a car charger is not the best tool to use on a small gell cell...

Since then Weldon seems to have abandoned this thread...