K
KraftyPg
Guest
I brought one of these last week
sorry about the crappy B&W pic but I couldn't be bothered taking photos and there isn't many websites with pics. For those interested it's yellow and black and in the same section at all the other chargers at SCA.
Why did I buy one of these rather than one of the UTEK smart chargers (or the like). 2 reasons, 1 price and 2 I only need to charge 12V lead acid batteries so all I needed was a 3 stage charger that would charge my 190ah battery when needed and the cranking battery if needed.
For different applications we've made smart chargers for everything from our 1.5v batteries up to 12v gel cells but the $79.00 (mates rates) price tag this thing came with meant that buying the parts and spending time building another charger just wasn't worth it. I'm not usually a huge fan of SCA stuff but this time it's not a bad little unit.
This thing (like many others) does the 3 stage charging where it will pump 12 amps into a flat battery until it's about 70% then drop down to about 8amps up to 90% and then drop down again to about 2 amps and continue trickle charging until the charger is removed. Although it's got a digital read out I also monitored the volts and amps with my meter and the digital read out was suprising close to accurate (within .1 of a volt and .2 of an amp) which makes it fairly accurate for those without meters.
My 190ah was sitting at about 12.0v when I started the charging cycle and within an hour or so (I wasn't accurately keeping time) the charge rate had gone down to below 4amps and it was a gradual drop to 1amp as the charger maintained the voltage in the battery. The on board fan operated for about 30 seconds every 5 mins or so but the unit never overheated.
For the times where a swift kick in the goolies is needed the auto circuit can be overridden and the charger will charge at a constant 12 8 or 2 amps depending on the settings chosen. There is also a recon circuit where the charger tries to recondition a possibly suspect battery by trying to maintain a certain terminal voltage for a full period of 24 hours, I haven't tried this yet as I have no need but the theory behind it is acceptable so I've no doubt it would work as expected.
Overall this charger is a cheap option that preforms more than adequately for most lead acid batteries (from 9AH upwards). I actually went in to buy the 10amp Calibre charger SCA had in their cattledog last week for $89 ($99 online) but they had none in stock and this was the only one they had and with a special price of $99 and it wasn't worth waiting till after easter to get the 10amp one ordered in. RRP for these if you can believe SCA advertising is about $130ish so at that price they are probably closer in price to some of the others out there so they might only be a bargain until the specials go off sale.
sorry about the crappy B&W pic but I couldn't be bothered taking photos and there isn't many websites with pics. For those interested it's yellow and black and in the same section at all the other chargers at SCA.
Why did I buy one of these rather than one of the UTEK smart chargers (or the like). 2 reasons, 1 price and 2 I only need to charge 12V lead acid batteries so all I needed was a 3 stage charger that would charge my 190ah battery when needed and the cranking battery if needed.
For different applications we've made smart chargers for everything from our 1.5v batteries up to 12v gel cells but the $79.00 (mates rates) price tag this thing came with meant that buying the parts and spending time building another charger just wasn't worth it. I'm not usually a huge fan of SCA stuff but this time it's not a bad little unit.
This thing (like many others) does the 3 stage charging where it will pump 12 amps into a flat battery until it's about 70% then drop down to about 8amps up to 90% and then drop down again to about 2 amps and continue trickle charging until the charger is removed. Although it's got a digital read out I also monitored the volts and amps with my meter and the digital read out was suprising close to accurate (within .1 of a volt and .2 of an amp) which makes it fairly accurate for those without meters.
My 190ah was sitting at about 12.0v when I started the charging cycle and within an hour or so (I wasn't accurately keeping time) the charge rate had gone down to below 4amps and it was a gradual drop to 1amp as the charger maintained the voltage in the battery. The on board fan operated for about 30 seconds every 5 mins or so but the unit never overheated.
For the times where a swift kick in the goolies is needed the auto circuit can be overridden and the charger will charge at a constant 12 8 or 2 amps depending on the settings chosen. There is also a recon circuit where the charger tries to recondition a possibly suspect battery by trying to maintain a certain terminal voltage for a full period of 24 hours, I haven't tried this yet as I have no need but the theory behind it is acceptable so I've no doubt it would work as expected.
Overall this charger is a cheap option that preforms more than adequately for most lead acid batteries (from 9AH upwards). I actually went in to buy the 10amp Calibre charger SCA had in their cattledog last week for $89 ($99 online) but they had none in stock and this was the only one they had and with a special price of $99 and it wasn't worth waiting till after easter to get the 10amp one ordered in. RRP for these if you can believe SCA advertising is about $130ish so at that price they are probably closer in price to some of the others out there so they might only be a bargain until the specials go off sale.
