Walmart has the Schumacher SpeedCharge Battery Maintainer and Charger for $16 + shipping. Shipping is $2, or pick up in-store to avoid the shipping fee. Automatically switches to trickle charging when battery is fully charged. Compatible with 6 or 12-volt batteries.
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anybody know if this is worth picking up? I just had a car battery need charging and I had to wait 30 minutes at advance auto. Would have been nice if I didn't need the trip
Yeah this is def a deal. I looked into one last year when I tore my acl and I knew I wouldn't be driving my big truck for about 4-5 months. Most of them were $40-70, so I ended up getting a really crappy one from ebay for this price.
Well, you should consider that to charge a relatively-dead auto battery to full capacity takes about 30 Amp-Hours (of course this is variable, depending on the capacity of the battery and how "dead" it is). This charger delivers 1.5 Amps, so it would take 30/1.5 = 20 hours to charge the battery.
Simply put, it'll work but it will be slooooow. This device is really made for maintaining batteries at full charge that aren't used very often.
Schumacher makes a larger unit that would be more appropriate but is more $$$. I have only had to use mine a couple of times but it works well. Has enough power to turn over your enginge if your battery is flat.
http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-SE-1275A-Automatic-Onboard-Battery/dp/B000BO8TTY
works great to maintain boat battery over long periods of non-use
I got a portable jump started I use to start a car that's been sitting around too long. It's even better because you can wire it in the trunk to stay charged. It has saved me a few times when I got to my car and found the burp dome light ran it down to baconnaise.
Not a bad price, but I just take the charger/maintainer off my backup sump pump battery and plug it into a set of jumper cables I lopped the alligator clips off of.
To merely maintain a battery you can do it cheaper. Just take a 12V (unregulated type so its peak unloaded voltage is about 16V) wall wart and put a series resistor on it so it's trickling at a very low current like around 100mA-200mA depending on battery size. However by the time you rig it up and add alligator clips it's probably worth the cost of this to save the time spent doing that.