Without knowing what a "whole bunch of money" is I will make a
suggestion. Looking forward. different forms of wet or dry gel cell and
advanced forms of "maintenance free" batteries will obsolete many of our
conventional battery chargers. Gel cells in particular want to be
charged differently. You are not even supposed to hook a gel up to a
conventional charger, although I know a bunch of people who do.
Recently we have been moving over to Optima batteries in all of the race
cars, trailers, and "antique" cars. Because of this I have just been out
shopping chargers and have found an excellent one in the Schumacher
line. It is called the Smart Charger . It is small, light, easy to
use, has a booster function for jump starts, and can also function as a
battery/alternator tester. It will do any kind of battery on the market
today so it should be good for many years in the future. I bought mine
at Advanced Auto for just under $80. I would consider that to be not a
lot of money looking down the road at it's ability to be the right
charger for far into the future. You can buy a far less expensive
conventional charger for now but at some point in the future it will be
useless. As far as that is concerned, send me an address and I will send
you one of the redundant ones I have here. It will work fine on any
battery including the first and second generation maintenance free type.
Just don't use it on a gel cell or any of the newest generation M/F
batteries. If you are not sure check the charging instructions on the
battery.
Thanks,
Durf
Chris Casey wrote:
>
> Anyway, I'm looking for a battery charger to keep on hand. One that will
>handle both a quick charge and a "trickle" charge. I can't spend a whole
>bunch of money...
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