Battery Charger Woes

I haven't been having very good luck with battery chargers here lately, I purchased my first one Sunday of last week and it fried within two minuets of plugging it in and hooking it to the brand new deep cycle I had also purchased. I exchanged it for anther and this Thursday night I hooded it up to a regular car battery that was pretty much dead and when I woke up Friday morning it was dead as well. :evil: I called customer support this time and his instructions were to call him when I reached the customer support desk and let him talk to the representative. :roll: Obviously he is not familiar with the exemplary people walmart has working behind the customer support desk. Anyway I just ended up exchanging it for another if this one dies I think I am going to ask to upgrade to the next better charger.

The charger is the 15amp ship n shore charger from walmart. It has a 5 year warranty so obviously they believe their product is pretty good but geesh two lemons in a row whats the chance. #-o

https://www.batterychargers.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductName=94026974

Maybe those two were bad and just thrown back up on the shelves? Wouldn't be the first time.

I had 2 of the exact same model go bad within a month of each other, those schumakers are peices of S***!!!!!! get your money back and buy a different brand unless you wanna wake up to go fishing and have no juice in your battery....

shawnfish said:

I had 2 of the exact same model go bad within a month of each other, those schumakers are peices of S***!!!!!! get your money back and buy a different brand unless you wanna wake up to go fishing and have no juice in your battery....

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This is not what I wanted to hear, the reviews it has online and reading on forums I was under the impression it was a good charger. Luckily right now my battery only gets used to power my depth finder and live well so wouldn't really be a trip killer but still it's kinda ridiculous.

Aaron Lariscy said:

I haven't been having very good luck with battery chargers here lately, I purchased my first one Sunday of last week and it fried within two minuets of plugging it in and hooking it to the brand new deep cycle I had also purchased. I exchanged it for anther and this Thursday night I hooded it up to a regular car battery that was pretty much dead and when I woke up Friday morning it was dead as well. :evil: I called customer support this time and his instructions were to call him when I reached the customer support desk and let him talk to the representative. :roll: Obviously he is not familiar with the exemplary people walmart has working behind the customer support desk. Anyway I just ended up exchanging it for another if this one dies I think I am going to ask to upgrade to the next better charger.

The charger is the 15amp ship n shore charger from walmart. It has a 5 year warranty so obviously they believe their product is pretty good but geesh two lemons in a row whats the chance. #-o

https://www.batterychargers.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductName=94026974

Click to expand...

One of the chargers I have is at least 20 years old form Sears, still works great. Another I have was form Orielys (I think) and it is about 7-8 years old, still works great.

I wouldn't buy one form Wal-Mart.

I have one of those cheap a## schumakers. I don't have much good to say about it, but it still works. I bought a BatteryMinder a while back and I'm sold on it. It charges and the goes into a maintain desulphate mode. It really works. If you don't need to charge your battery fast then this is the one. It brought my deep cycle back in about 2 weeks.

+1 on the battery minder, I bought one back during the winter to run an experiment after reading about them and their ability to de-sulfate the plates. I have a HD road King with a 3 y/o battery, and it was pretty much a dead duck. The battery would charge up, then 24 hrs later test it with a meter, and it was basically dead. I hooked the battery minder up to the bike's battery and let it go for about 3 months, and the battery started holding a charge, it would slowly lose the charge, but still holds a charge at 12.69v now after being off the BM for a week. Not sure I would want to use the BM as my only charger, but to keep a good battery in good condition, the BM is a solution imo. For the bike, it works just fine, if I'm going fishing on back to back days, I would use the onboard charger to ensure I had fully charged batteries on the boat. I use the BM to "clean up" or condition the batteries during the week to keep them charged.

So what is a good charger to buy I would like something similar being a smart charger in the 15 amp range not on board simply because my boat is too small for such.

Not a smart charger, but I have a Schumacher 4 amp model that is over 30 years old and is still used today for my boat batteries after each outing. After a full charge, I hook the batteries up to a float charger until the next use. The float chargers are about $5 at Harbor Freight.

A slow charge is usually the best for a battery and also cheap works for me.