My car battery is currently dead. It was recommended to me to charge it first, and not jump a completely drained battery. I want to buy a tool that will charge my battery, something I can also use to jump my car in am emergency. I was assuming these two things were the same tool(what I’ve always called a jumper box) but after looking online I an thoroughly confused with all the terminology and different amp levels.
Here is a 25 amp battery charger with a 75 amp engine start.
So I’ve got battery chargers, engine starters, jump starters, power stations, all of differing amps. Are these all different names for the same thing? What would you get for a 2001 Cherokee Sport? Any other battery tools I should look for?
First one is a battery charger. Doesn’t seem bad, doesn’t seem great.
Second one is a battery charger with 2, 10, and 20 amp rates. Doesn’t specifically mention automatic shutoff (to avoid overcharging), though it may achieve that goal in float mode.
Third is a jumper battery with extra features that are probably not helpful (air compressor, 120 volt AC output). Won’t charge your battery.
Fourth one is a battery charger with 2, 15, and 40 amp rates. Again doesn’t specifically mention auto shutoff, but may well have equivalent feature.
The “engine start” is a high-rate feature of the battery chargers, meant to act like a jumper cable start.
The particular jumper battery here calls itself a power station because it provides AC as well as DC.
Battery chargers will recharge the battery (takes hours), and give a jump start (that doesn’t always do the job, in my experience) when plugged in to a home outlet.
Jumper batteries will start a car (if they have enough power [the amp rating] for the particular low/dead battery) anywhere – this is what you carry in your trunk for emergencies.
No device both recharges dead batteries and provides carry-with-you jump start capability. You’ll need to buy and charger and a jumper battery if you want to do both.
My advice is to go to a good quality auto parts store (e.g., Carquest or NAPA) to see what they have and get advice and recommendations from them.
I’m kind of surprised they don’t make combination jumper battery/chargers. Given that the jumper battery needs to have an internal charger anyway, it’d be little effort to make it robust and switchable for external use. I’m sure the internal chargers are pretty low current, but I think anyone who has the jumper battery available can live with that.
(Most existing ones likely could be modified, but it’s probably not worth messing around with it to do it).
I wish I could find a source to cite…while this seems like a good idea, it shouldn’t quite work, if my thinking is right.
Car batteries are 12 volt. You can’t really charge a 12 volt battery with 12 volts, you have to overvolt a tiny bit. Alternators put out around 14 volts, for example. The Jump Pack batteries are used to give those batteries a “boost” for start…which I would think would require them to be a 14 volt battery, if not more.
And to charge the jump pack, you’d need to overvolt that as well, probably need a 16 volt charger. So you’d be SERIOUSLY overcharging your car battery if you used a jump pack charger.
But I have to admit, this is all a guess. My jump pack and voltmeter are out in the shed, and it’s too late to go get it. I’m lazy.
Unless you’re service station or a professional service person I think battery chargers are generally a waste of time and money. Over time I’ve found that modern batteries not holding a good charge after being jumped and charged via the car are on the way out, and need to be replaced. Jump the battery with cables and take a long drive with jumpers in the trunk. If the battery continues to not hold a charge it needs to be replaced. Helping it limp along more slowly to it’s death with a charger is not a good investment in most cases.
your first link list a charger with 75Amp start. Not enough if the car battery is drained.
Last link, the Sears lists 125Amp Start. better but still pretty weak.
This is more likely to get a car jumped. Still kind of cheap, but ok for home use.
I find them useful. When I fire up the riding lawnmower after it’s been sitting all winter, or accidentally leave something turned on in the car overnight, the charger comes in handy.
I thought the same until I bought one. Very useful for charging the battery for the lawn mower and the boat. The charger I bought has a big capacitor or some such and can be used to jumpstart the car (without having to bother the neighbors or call AAA). Turns out to be surprisingly handy.
If you have other small battery cranked engines or boats etc. this is most certainly true. I was just speaking to their overall utility as a purchase if used strictly for cars used every day in a 1 or 2 car household. In my experience if a modern battery starts to fail these days it’s either a defective car charging system or the battery is very shortly on it’s way over the cliff. A charger only prolongs the inevitable (and not by much) in these scenarios.
I actually have the fourth one the OP linked to. Among its bells and whistles is an alternator test of sorts. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but if we have a failing battery and it reads as bad, it’s an easier call to make to a mechanic.
The manual lists all sorts of options, from battery size to charging method. Also, it can do something like cycling the charge (I’m not around it at the moment to read the right term). It refers to knocking off build-up on the plates or something. I also like it because it gives some indication of progress.
Why is it good to have? It’s a lot easier to use than a pair of jumper cables–particularly if the dead car is in the garage and you can’t easily get to the battery. And for less than a $100, it’s a ‘convenience box’. I won’t need it but a handful of times over the next ten to fifteen years (dead batteries, accidentally left-on lights), but when I do, I’ll be mighty glad we have it.
Oops, yes–it’s for home use. It can charge a battery out of the car, if you have a second car to schlep the battery home and a safe place to leave the dead car (in the rare cirumstance where AAA, jumping, or some other sane approach to getting the dead car moving isn’t available).
For on the road, I keep a pair of heavy-duty cables in the car (from what I understand, the thicker the cables the better/easier the jump) and a Porta-Jump. The only time I used it was with a friend’s dead battery in the driveway (lights left on). We could have jumped it or used the charger, but I wanted to try out the portable thing because until then (and still somewhat) I thought it was a bit gimmicky to actually work. It’s much smaller than the portable battery-powered jumper-boxes; it fits in the glove compartment.
I think the difference is that it attempts to give a battery a minimal charge, enough to start. It has a light that tells you if the battery is too far gone to work with it. It plugs into the cigarette lighter port, you let it sit for a while (ten to fifteen minutes?) and then try and start. In the one test I put it through, it started the car.
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I have owned portable jumper units and always bought the largest one I could stand to pay for at the time and rarely ever used it for my self. It was a neighborhood assist unit that helped several people over the years.
Every so often when the lights are left on while we are in the Emergency Garage with an ambulance (Big diesel dual/batteries) and we are ready to depart and all we get is a clicking starter relay we call the maintenance desk and someone will come with a little jump unit no bigger than a 6-pack (and mine were like a 12 pack) and the engine would crank like a new charged battery:confused:.
And it had nothing to do with the battery sitting a few min., because we would try that first and just before connection with jump pack.
So I say they are a wonderful tool and I would have another one but I just don’t use it very often.And I do have one of the new style battery chargers (smart chargers) for all the various battery’s.
And the reverse polarity is a wonderful feature. I destroyed the diode on my outboard motor once and we have 2 Model A fire trucks that need a charge every spring and the positive ground is forgotten at times.:smack:
I don’t have anything else that uses a 12 v battery to start, but I’ve left things on overnight often enough to make the charger a useful thing to have. It has a 125 A starting setting that’s gotten me where I need to go (only a few minutes late) plenty of times. Without it, what would I have done? Wake up a neighbor for a jump at 4 AM? Call a tow truck and pay 40 bucks? It’s paid for itself many times over, when the tow truck would have been the only alternative.
Of course, I do know when the battery needs replacing, too, so I don’t use it in futile attempts to extend their life.