"justallan" wrote in message
...
Hello all.

I have a lawn edger with an electric start that is powered by 4x sub C
nicads. They have died and the charger has long gone missing. A
genuine charger costs about $70. Does anyone know, is there any
reason I cannot use something like this to charge them?

http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=DC1014

Thanks for reading.

That one is probably way too small.

There are several aftermarket R/C SMART chargers that would be more
appropriate. They sense the number and type of batteries and automatically
select the charge accordingly. It is important to have identical cells of
the same state of charge in a pack.
http://www.hobby-lobby.com/smart_cha..._2321_prd1.htm

Or you could build your own:
http://www.linear.com/pc/downloadDoc...3,C1037,D11197

Or modify an existing surplus tool charger;
http://www.myra-simon.com/bike/charger2.html

If the sub-C's have been down for a while, you may have lost one or more.
You may have to replace or repack the battery. It occurs to me that a whole
new lawn edger might be had for the same price, but I might be wrong.

I usually don't bother fixing up something like that unless there are enough
junk parts laying around so I don't have to chase around for parts and pay
top price for whatever I can get to do the job. I have found discount new
power tool batteries for defunct or discontinued tools and opened them up to
use as replacement cells. Occasionally RS has put R/C packs on sale too.