In the market for a battery charger

Marc Roberts said:

I am looking for recommendations for a new battery charger. Has anyone purchased one lately? This would be for general use as well as for the less frequently used old tractor, Mustang and Model A. Being able to connect it and walk away for a day or more is a must, as is both 6V and 12V capability. Desulfating and trickle functions would be nice, too.

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I recently bought a CTEK MXS 5.0 for the wife's 07 Shelby for winter storage. Easy plug and play. They have the traditional charger clamps and a short connector that you can keep attached to the battery and just plug into the charger when needed. I did the connector thing, so I can just park and plug. So far so good.

I recommend looking into CTEK. They have several different types of chargers.

CTEK seems popular now. I've had good luck with the deltran battery tenders. They make one that will work 6 or 12 volt. I have it, but have only used it as a 12. No battery in the A yet.

Also have a regular battery charger. Its probably 50 years old, made/branded as Sears. Still works. Not very smart though.

I've an old Craftsman one with a 2 amp, 10 amp and jump-start modes and it seems to work just fine.
Kinda like my old Mustang, old school and super reliable.

One word. Schumacher.

myfirstcar66 said:

I've an old Craftsman one with a 2 amp, 10 amp and jump-start modes and it seems to work just fine.
Kinda like my old Mustang, old school and super reliable.

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I have an old Craftsman too, 2 and 6 amp. Still use it from time to time.
About 2 years ago I bought a tender for whichever car is on top of the lift.

Spliffy: Your CTEK MXS 5.0 fills the bill for my 12v cars, but I would need another separate charger for the 6v cars. I might go that way. Some are more affordable than I had expected. I also need to decide if going with a professional duty unit makes sense for me. Between equipment, daily drivers, the collecter cars, and my grown sons borrowing tools, a battery charger is always getting a workout here.

I've been picking up old chargers from the 50s and before. The latest one has some weird lightbulb in it that kinda sorta wants to be a vacuum tube rectifier I think.

The new ones try to be too smart and won't even attempt to charge a battery if it's below their pre-set threshold. The whole reason I'm hooking up a battery charger in the first place is because the battery is too low so to me that's kinda defeating the purpose. The old ones just turn on and put out power. No sensing, no electronics, just AC in DC out.

They probably won't help with your trickle charging and desulfating though. Those might be tough to find on an box with a light bulb and no on-off switch.

1st choice would be a schumacher.

I would personally stay away from the newer SMART chargers that turn on/off by themselves. If you got a real dead (no lights, horn, no clicking solenoid) battery they won't even turn on to start charging.

Go by weight, heavy means big transformer and lots of copper.

I am always on the look out for junk rolling DUMB chargers, mechanical timer type. Usually if they won't work its just blown hockey puck diodes, a easy fix $20.

Schumacher for charging. Genius or Deltron for battery maintaining.

I'll add, some years ago, I had two DelTron units that died. I called customer service seeking repair information. They asked me to ship them to them. About a week later, I received two new units, no charge. What this say about them?

This won't help the OP, but I have a newer style charger with electronics and such which works fine, but no go when I tried to use it for electrolysis of my Mustang seat frames to de-rust. In good ole California, you cannot buy the old style chargers, and I could not even find any that would ship here online. Rumor has it, I may have bought one on eBay from Canada. Worked great! Won't ever get rid of that one.

My last one was a CTEK. I really like it. Here's the one I got from Amazon.

i use schumacher at any of the box stores
had a few battery tenders get stuck on and boil out the battery. Once it completely ruin my engine compartment costing thousands in damage
since then I put them on a regular household timer. 6 hours on 18 off

I bought one at WM for $30. Does the job.

Magnus said:

I've been picking up old chargers from the 50s and before. The latest one has some weird lightbulb in it that kinda sorta wants to be a vacuum tube rectifier I think.

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I remember those! In my prior life as a carny in the early 80's, we used a number of electric carts/trucks for hauling stuff around. Had a bay of random chargers to keep em charged. A couple had the bulb. Had not thought of that in many years. In my youth I was not curious enough to figure out the purpose of the bulb.

I use CTEC and an Optima for trickle and a 55 year old transformer type for a quick boost.

66conv6 said:

Father in law's battery charger:

View attachment 836038

I think it's awesome.

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That is a badass looking charger. Simple but yet has all we need to charge a battery.