View Single Post
  #18   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y,alt.engineering.electrical,sci.electronics.design,uk.rec.cars.maintenance
Dave Plowman (News) Dave Plowman (News) is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 43,017
Default Unsmoothed car battery charger - is it crap?

In article ,
Eddie wrote:
My car battery is oversized for the car. The battery is a bit old
but usually works fine. The battery is flat (I left the lights
on).


My fancy new modern charger senses a poor battery and only puts in
very little charge.


I used to use a really old charger to charge this battery
successfully. I opened up the old charger and saw it was only a
transformer and a big rectifier. That's it. No soothing.


Is this ok for a car battery or is it way too crude?


An ancient crude charger is actually quite good at recovering a flat and
possibly sulphated battery - it will output quite a high voltage with a
high impedance load, which is needed to help combat the sulphation.
However, after the battery has started to take a reasonable charge rate,
ditch it and use your modern one.

--
*Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.