Getting caught up on these vids after losing track of your channel for a year, and discover you've tripled your subscriber count. Might be one of the only CZcams channels that can do that in the 2020s while still publishing in standard definition. What you've got going here is definitely unique!
Thanks Aaron. Glad you're enjoying my videos. I had never expected to have this many subscribers on a channel about old junk getting fixed up; but I am happy about it. I wish I could upload in HD every video, but where I live we don't have high speed internet. It takes all night to upload most of my 20 - 30 minute videos in SD resolution. I do upload in HD for project conclusions on longer series, where the end result is worth the good imagery. Those videos are much shorter. If they install fiber internet here, this may all change, hopefully.
@@davida1hiwaaynet USA, the third world when it comes to connectivity and price. I can get fibre for cheaper than what you pay in the USA, though I stick to the LTE connection which can handle a pretty good data rate instead, though it is capped. $12 per month, on a monthly basis, and it works well for me.
@@SeanBZA Everything comes with some form of trade-off. I live about 20 miles out of town in a very rural and peaceful setting. Few neighbors and pretty well complete freedom to do whatever I want with respect to my cars, working outdoors at any time of day etc. We do have LTE service here, but the DSL land-line I have is faster than that by a small amount; although it's not fiber speeds.
"Learn something about battery chargers" I sure did and thats have you fix it for me. 🤣 Another outstanding video. You sure do know your stuff. If I got it there I would definitely let the smoke out. 🤣🤪
Great video, very clear process. I sure would like to see you troubleshoot a “modern” digital controlled high boost charger that won’t even charge batteries that are “quite low” on charge. (Like a Craftsman 200 amp boost roll around charger”. Thanks for considering this request as nobody else had attempted this! Maybe even how to bypass defective digital control and go back to old school simple switches and amp meter! So many friends wish they could still get this type of old school gear.
I have one of those Schumachers, but more than likely a newer version with a timer switch that went bad. The previous owner somehow got the internal wires wrapped around the cooling fan and burned it out because it couldn't spin and all he got was a buzz. He wanted to scrap it but I took it off his hands and installed the new manufacturer's timer switch and cooling fan from an exhaust fan for a bathroom that I bought new and disassembled to use only the fan. *It now works again.* I use it frequently when the "Smart" chargers out there say the battery is too low to charge to give them a "ZAP" until the smart charger is fooled into believing the battery is now worthy of a charge and does its smart charging. Circuit boards aren't as smart as they appear to be and frequently fail before the base machine has seen any use. Thankfully this charger has no circuit board in it. I cleaned all the contacts and connections inside, removed the wasp nest, straightened the casing a bit that was assembled wrong, and went through a similar diagnostic on it. I do not do it professionally, but I do know how to trace a wire and know whether it is getting input and output, so I think a lot of what caused it not to work was neglect and age. It now has a dry home and no more access by insects to nest inside of it, so I expect the approx. $50.00 I put in for the switch and fan should keep it alive another 30+ years or so.
Those timer switches are handy but once they go bad, the results can be disastrous for your battery! I have another similar charger, with a dead timer. That one stays at my house garage in case a car won't start there. I've said it before but will say again.... I have never, not even once, had any luck with so-called "smart" chargers. They just don't do what they claim and have lots of side effects such as selecting the wrong voltage (charging a 12V battery to 6V only) and failing to turn on when a battery is completely discharged. Add to that the common occurrence of sudden catastrophic failures of the circuit boards, and you have an unmitigated piece of garbage! It's good you got your old-school charger working with a few simple repairs!
David, you hit the nail on the head. This comment amplifies my request for upgrading a “smart charger“ to “old school”. As far as I can tell all the basics of rectifiers transformers and capacitors(?)test out fine.
I have the same one, but both diodes were blown in half. I ordered two new ones. That single aluminum plate doesn't seem to cool the diodes as well as it could, so I got a CPU heatsink and cut it in half, then drilled and tapped it on each side to attach it to the aluminum plate so it acts as a better heatsink. I saved a microwave oven 120v a/c fan and mounted it above to blow down across the fins. The hot wire is soldered to the black wire that comes off of the timer, so when you twist the timer it supplies power to the fan. Schumaker seems to have cut corners to put the cheapest stuff in these things. There's plenty of room inside these cases to do what you want.
Oh man thank you!!!!! My old Craftsman stopped working like 3 years ago. I heard a pop while I was charging. Now it works again. Saved me from buying a new one. I was using my 6 amp for these past few years 😂
Great video. Very informative some of it push the boundaries of my understanding transformers but all in all helped me diagnose my own charger. Thank you!
Very good tutorial. I have no skill with electronics, but I am slowly gaining confidence. I have a similar charger, also gifted. Interesting to see what's inside the box and confirms my guess that they might be fixable. Thank you
@@davida1hiwaaynet Still got the GE charger my father bought in the 1960's, made in 1956, though it did get an upgrade by me, removing the selenium rectifier stack, and putting in a simple charge controller so it would not overcharge cells. Selectable for 2V, 6v and 12V packs as well. Another one as well, later make, around 1970's, that had a silicon rectifier in it, which had broken in half, so was replaced with a 25A version.
@@davida1hiwaaynet interesting yeah I've not seen these much anymore at stores like I did and the new stuff they have isn't the same I noticed too just more of like jump starters and all that type of thing and actual battery chargers are small and just something you plug up and walk away that takes forever to charge those I don't like my self Like at Walmart and etc . but got this one for part of payment for doing some work on a vehicle for a friend said was just sitting around not used . Since I revive vehicle that's been sitting for years and other things ha this definitely will be used for sure!
@@CDSAutomotiveGarage It's always good to get things for "free" bonuses while working on something! It is getting harder to find good products in stores now. They just want to sell the most cheaply made things now. Most of the old-school people who know better than to buy that are getting out of the field by now. That leaves people who don't know better and think that it's normal for a charger to take many hours, and only work for a year or so before you have to buy another one.
I most certainly would love to have an old Tungar charger. Definitely need to disconnect the battery (+) and (-) terminals from the vehicle before attaching the Tungar charger! I've only seen them in pictures and heard about them, but it seems that they are only a reactor coil in series with the Tungar rectifier bulb. Half-wave rectified mains voltage with a current limit LOL!
@@davida1hiwaaynet Well, in the early days of DC mains, you had half the street at +240VDC, and the other half at -240VDC, so charging batteries all you needed was a 2 bar electric heater to use as a dropper resistor. Across the road from me is the old trolleybus substation, which has a separate mercury arc rectifier room on it, that used to hold the 6 pole rectifier unit that provided power to the trolleybus central power, and the cables are still buried in the ground as well. The poles used to hold them are still used for street lights.
@@SeanBZA Love that old, early technology. It's good that they have repurposed the old poles for lighting instead of taking them down and losing that history! There was a whole lot of interesting stuff going on back during the "War of the currents" era. Quite a fascinating part of history.
I took an old welder and turned it into a boost charger, by simply putting a 50A press fit diode into a chunk of aluminium, and then adding a 40A circuit breaker to the connection. That works well to boost a flat battery to start the car, just wind the current to minimum on the welder, and connect, and wait for the thermal breaker to trip on the roughly 60A charge current. Reset it once, and after the second trip it generally will start fine. All parts, from the press fit diode, the breaker and the wire to connect them were either salvaged or scrap parts. Air cooled variable current arc welder, that I added a fan to internally to cool it, so that you could have better than the 5% duty cycle it came with, the fan went into the bolt holes there already for a fan, and was an old 230VAC 160mm fan that came from some scrapped equipment, noisy, but can move air, and cools down the transformer when you stop welding, because the stray magnetic field while welding tends to lock the rotor of it solid. The welder was an auction buy, good work out of it over the years, and with aluminium wire very light compared to the old oil filled one I had. Best $5 spend ever, even if I did spend $10 in replacing the leads with decent welding cables, with actual copper in them, over the thin copper it came with.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Open circuit voltage is 40 to 70VAC, depending on just how much of the shunt you have in the core. Really nice welder, I have used it quite a bit over the years, till i got an inverter welder on sale, which won me over for the light weight plus the ability to weld thin steel with a thickish electrode, and the ease to wind up the wick as needed for thicker material.
Neat to see the insides and the point of failure as always! Funnily enough I have a very similar one, main difference is it is rated at 200A and has a mechanical timer. Its branded Motomaster/Canadian Tire which is a dominant hardware/auto store here) but made in USA. My guess is it was probably made in the same factory as yours. You cant beat the simplicity of chargers like that to jump start a car or quickly charge a dead battery. Its also great for hooking to a variac if you need need a variable source of high DC current (something you cant do with an electronic one).
Thanks for the comment! Your idea about using a variac for variable DC power is a good point. I was on a project with a 24V NiCd battery bank, 300AH. It was made up of 20 individual cells. The battery had been left in storage for 5 years with a load connected. It was very much fully discharged! We called the battery manufacturer and got instructions to recondition the battery. They required each cell individually brought up to 1.2V at a maximum of 20A. To accomplish that without a special battery charger, I used a charger similar to this, with a variac! Worked like a charm. After each cell was somewhat balanced, the built-in battery charger was able to take over. In spite of sitting that long, discharged; those batteries still worked as designed! They were starting batteries for a diesel generator engine. I've heard of Canadian Tire before. Seems to be popular and similar to a combination of our Sears / Tractor Supply / Harbor Freight style shops.
@@davida1hiwaaynet I'm amazed you were able to resurrect he NiCads. I was under the impression that they tended to short internally after long periods of complete discharge. I even remember seeing a project in one of the now defunct electronics magazines covering how to use a big capacitor and an scr to crate a burst of current to vaporize the shorts. Canadian Tire is quite unique in terms of the mix of products and probably closest to Sears of the three places you mention: The focus is on tools, hardware, automotive parts, outdoors (camping, sports,garden) but also household hardware like kitchen items, cleaning items etc. If your in Canada sometime drop by a Canadian Tire to see a very unique Canadian store!
@@ElectromagneticVideos I will definitely check out Canadian Tire if and when I get a chance to visit! My father lived in Rochester, NY and we crossed the border to see the Canadian side of Niagara Falls a few times. I was just a kid at the time, though. As for the NiCd batteries, I think the reason the manufacturer recommended the cell-by-cell procedure was to discover any shorted cells, before they caused the remaining cells to be overcharged by the 24V charger (because it is set up for a 20-cell string, and if a cell was shorted, the string is effectively now less cells and would need a lower charge voltage). The cells did appear shorted at first, but as the charger and variac were used on them, they would start showing voltage. These were large format flooded cells, 300AH - so the dynamics may be different from smaller sizes such as power tool batteries.
@@davida1hiwaaynet That actually "close" to where I am (Ottawa) which is near the east of Lake Ontario. That makes sense about the cell being huge. Didnt know there was such a thing as a flooded NiCad. I learn something every day!
I've got one of these, with a different paint job, and mine has a timer. The clock on the timer doesn't move, but otherwise works nice. Found it in the back of my scrapper's truck. I think mine was scrapped because the red and black clips were mixed up lol
half wave rectified unregulated battery boiler haha. I have one that someone gave me years ago and it's great for boosting but I sure prefer a regulated charger for actual charging. Not the digital crap they sell now, just an old fashioned analog charger that puts out reasonable and predictable voltage.
You like the ferroresonant and or mag amp chargers I bet! Those are very good but pretty pricey for consumer grade stuff. I do have a 1978 vintage SCR regulated charger, though. It's pretty effective.
Did your needle still work with the switch being bad? I have a smaller 2/12/75 Shumacher unit I have had for over 20 years and the needle is bouncing up and down like there is a bad battery cell and no charge is coming out. Weirdest thing of all is that the charger worked fine last time I used it. It died while sitting on my shelf lol. I don't have much electronic equipment to test with and even this video is a bit above my ability but am thinking that replacing this cheap part might fix it.
All the needle does is show the current flowing. Your charger can still work without the amp meter working, but you need to test it. My amp meter went bad, so I just removed it and test with a multimeter. You can buy a multimeter at harbor freight for pretty cheaply. You won't regret it. My little harbor freight battery chargers amp meter went bad as well, but it still puts out 13.5v when I hook it up. The only way to know is with a multimeter set to DC voltage to test your output. If your charger went bad, it's probably the rectifying diodes or a blown fuse/circuit breaker.
i have a sears 2 -40-200 amp charger looks like the one u put breaker in mine has the Aluminum plate the biger cable with a diode attacted to it diode came apart cable just hangin there how do you put them in they look like they are pressed in the aluminum plate i thought might have replace those before i love this old charger any help would be Appreciated
I ended up lining the knurling on the diodes up with the marks left behind in the aluminum plate from the last ones and manually pressing them in with my fingers and thumb, which got them almost all the way seated, then used a block of aluminum with a hole drilled in it to protect the wire coming out and pressed it the rest of the way in with my vise. My charger is working again!
I have an old, old, old Heyer 6-12v battery charger. It's the one with 3 light bulbs. It will not charge unless I jump the cyclinode. Can you help, mybe send a wiring diagram??? Thank you,,, Leadskillet
I have a similar but older Schumacher charger. Its 6V and !2V with a load tester. Everything works except for the 30A 12V charge. 12V Boost works fine. Any idea where to check?
Yeah, the breaker is designed to protect the transformer and rectifier from exceeded duty-cycle. The continuous rating of the charger is 30A. At 50A you're limited to 5 minutes and 150A supported for only 2.5 seconds! As with most consumer-grade items they exaggerate the ratings and then put fine-print to clarify that the ratings are fake. LOL!
Are you measuring it with a battery connected to the charger output? Does it charge a battery? It may be that only one of the two diodes (or diode groups) are working, therefore cutting your waveform to half-wave. A meter may average this out to a lower voltage.
Its an old manual battery charger with lo-mid-hi and boost, after connecting to battery the breaker in side started going crazy and just wonder if transformer was over heated and shorted or the switch, its an old charger and has no cooling fan, without battery
I think you're probably mostly right. Part of it may be the cost of metal stamping dies to make the charger shell. It is very costly to make the dies to stamp out the shell of the charger, and the cost of the sheet metal is not too high. It's more economical to make one standardized shell and use it for a wide range of chargers, versus having several slightly different housings.
If you have voltage on the primary going in, but not on the secondary coming out of the transformer, more than likely the problem is a blown thermal fuse inside the transformer. You may be able to replace the internal thermal fuse with an external fuse, if you can access it.
@@davida1hiwaaynet there is a fuse on top of the transformer that from what i can tell is working. There is current going through it. Could there be another fuse inside it? Or could the windings inside be shorted?
@@swiftqwrt7543 Normally, if a transformer has a shorted winding, it will draw a very high current and either blow a fuse, or burn out completely. If that happens, typically the transformer will appear burned, charred, or melted. It's very hard for a transformer to "not work" when the winding is intact. More than likely, there's a one-time thermal fuse embedded in the winding, which is open.
That is true. They need to be able to carry the current provided by the charger. This charger isn't able to continuously output more than 30 of so amps, so a moderate quality set of cables would suffice.
Sad the idiot company cant even put positve or negative on there cables if they go bad . I learned more of your vid then there shitty schematics they post if you dig
Thanks for the comment! Are you talking about the Fluke 1587? Or the Kill-A-Watt test box? For this job, one might not need a meter with insulation resistance modes. However, all the testing used modes used here are available on most multimeters. The Kill-A-Watt I do consider a basic meter which should be mandatory for anyone who works on stuff like this.
@@davida1hiwaaynet I like them both, but have not. Have several meters, analog and digital. Use clamp type for current measurements. Might get a Kill-A-Watt, don't think the Fluke. Kinda pricey.
@@joehead1294 That's good. The Kill-A-Watt is just so convenient and it will measure very low currents in the milliamp range. That is helpful for small home appliances. I've had the clamp meters be inaccurate at low currents since they just aren't really designed for that. The Fluke is pricey but many of the industrial sites where I go for my "real job" require this sort of meter. Those cheap ones are very dicey on 480, if you know what I mean.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Yeah, I use a 10 loop multiplier for the low stuff, I guess you could make a 100 loop for more accuracy, I mostly work with DC.(retired automotive) Remember Fluke 8020A? Lotta good stuff out there nowadays.
@@joehead1294 Those loop multipliers are handy. I had a plug-in one, with two outlets and two windows, one was a 10x and the other 100x. Sadly that was ruined during some of my field service work years past. My helper thought it was a plug multi-tap and plugged a large load into the 100x side and melted the whole thing. I haven't used the old 8020A, but I expect they were the best of what was available at the time.
Getting caught up on these vids after losing track of your channel for a year, and discover you've tripled your subscriber count. Might be one of the only CZcams channels that can do that in the 2020s while still publishing in standard definition. What you've got going here is definitely unique!
Thanks Aaron. Glad you're enjoying my videos. I had never expected to have this many subscribers on a channel about old junk getting fixed up; but I am happy about it. I wish I could upload in HD every video, but where I live we don't have high speed internet. It takes all night to upload most of my 20 - 30 minute videos in SD resolution. I do upload in HD for project conclusions on longer series, where the end result is worth the good imagery. Those videos are much shorter. If they install fiber internet here, this may all change, hopefully.
@@davida1hiwaaynet USA, the third world when it comes to connectivity and price. I can get fibre for cheaper than what you pay in the USA, though I stick to the LTE connection which can handle a pretty good data rate instead, though it is capped. $12 per month, on a monthly basis, and it works well for me.
@@SeanBZA
Everything comes with some form of trade-off. I live about 20 miles out of town in a very rural and peaceful setting. Few neighbors and pretty well complete freedom to do whatever I want with respect to my cars, working outdoors at any time of day etc. We do have LTE service here, but the DSL land-line I have is faster than that by a small amount; although it's not fiber speeds.
"Learn something about battery chargers" I sure did and thats have you fix it for me. 🤣 Another outstanding video. You sure do know your stuff. If I got it there I would definitely let the smoke out. 🤣🤪
Thanks Reed; I appreciate it! I expect you would have managed to figure this one out with a minimum of smoke release LOL!
Excellent job on that Battery charger repair
Thanks!
What an excellent fault finding video I’ve been searching for a video like this for ages Thankyou
Great video, very clear process. I sure would like to see you troubleshoot a “modern” digital controlled high boost charger that won’t even charge batteries that are “quite low” on charge. (Like a Craftsman 200 amp boost roll around charger”. Thanks for considering this request as nobody else had attempted this! Maybe even how to bypass defective digital control and go back to old school simple switches and amp meter! So many friends wish they could still get this type of old school gear.
I have one of those Schumachers, but more than likely a newer version with a timer switch that went bad. The previous owner somehow got the internal wires wrapped around the cooling fan and burned it out because it couldn't spin and all he got was a buzz. He wanted to scrap it but I took it off his hands and installed the new manufacturer's timer switch and cooling fan from an exhaust fan for a bathroom that I bought new and disassembled to use only the fan. *It now works again.*
I use it frequently when the "Smart" chargers out there say the battery is too low to charge to give them a "ZAP" until the smart charger is fooled into believing the battery is now worthy of a charge and does its smart charging. Circuit boards aren't as smart as they appear to be and frequently fail before the base machine has seen any use. Thankfully this charger has no circuit board in it.
I cleaned all the contacts and connections inside, removed the wasp nest, straightened the casing a bit that was assembled wrong, and went through a similar diagnostic on it. I do not do it professionally, but I do know how to trace a wire and know whether it is getting input and output, so I think a lot of what caused it not to work was neglect and age. It now has a dry home and no more access by insects to nest inside of it, so I expect the approx. $50.00 I put in for the switch and fan should keep it alive another 30+ years or so.
Those timer switches are handy but once they go bad, the results can be disastrous for your battery! I have another similar charger, with a dead timer. That one stays at my house garage in case a car won't start there.
I've said it before but will say again.... I have never, not even once, had any luck with so-called "smart" chargers. They just don't do what they claim and have lots of side effects such as selecting the wrong voltage (charging a 12V battery to 6V only) and failing to turn on when a battery is completely discharged. Add to that the common occurrence of sudden catastrophic failures of the circuit boards, and you have an unmitigated piece of garbage!
It's good you got your old-school charger working with a few simple repairs!
David, you hit the nail on the head. This comment amplifies my request for upgrading a “smart charger“ to “old school”. As far as I can tell all the basics of rectifiers transformers and capacitors(?)test out fine.
Great video! Thanks for taking the time to record and post.
I have a Sears one and it had the same problem. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for a clear concise explanation and diagnosis. A rarity indeed.
Glad it helped you!
I have the same one, but both diodes were blown in half. I ordered two new ones. That single aluminum plate doesn't seem to cool the diodes as well as it could, so I got a CPU heatsink and cut it in half, then drilled and tapped it on each side to attach it to the aluminum plate so it acts as a better heatsink. I saved a microwave oven 120v a/c fan and mounted it above to blow down across the fins. The hot wire is soldered to the black wire that comes off of the timer, so when you twist the timer it supplies power to the fan. Schumaker seems to have cut corners to put the cheapest stuff in these things. There's plenty of room inside these cases to do what you want.
Oh man thank you!!!!! My old Craftsman stopped working like 3 years ago. I heard a pop while I was charging. Now it works again. Saved me from buying a new one. I was using my 6 amp for these past few years 😂
Lol, I have an old Craftsman too and it made a popping sound when charging. After seeing this one I assume it was the fuse.
Great video. Very informative some of it push the boundaries of my understanding transformers but all in all helped me diagnose my own charger. Thank you!
great find . chargers have become quite expensive , and complicated . i prefer the old 'dumb' technology over the new smart technology .
Most certainly! In this case, simpler is by far better.
Very good tutorial. I have no skill with electronics, but I am slowly gaining confidence. I have a similar charger, also gifted. Interesting to see what's inside the box and confirms my guess that they might be fixable. Thank you
Interesting to know , I have a small hand carry one of this brand battery charger it works great whenever I've needed it
It's hard to beat something simple like this. Hang on to that one you have because they are hard to get now.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Still got the GE charger my father bought in the 1960's, made in 1956, though it did get an upgrade by me, removing the selenium rectifier stack, and putting in a simple charge controller so it would not overcharge cells. Selectable for 2V, 6v and 12V packs as well. Another one as well, later make, around 1970's, that had a silicon rectifier in it, which had broken in half, so was replaced with a 25A version.
@@davida1hiwaaynet interesting yeah I've not seen these much anymore at stores like I did and the new stuff they have isn't the same I noticed too just more of like jump starters and all that type of thing and actual battery chargers are small and just something you plug up and walk away that takes forever to charge those I don't like my self Like at Walmart and etc .
but got this one for part of payment for doing some work on a vehicle for a friend said was just sitting around not used . Since I revive vehicle that's been sitting for years and other things ha this definitely will be used for sure!
@@CDSAutomotiveGarage
It's always good to get things for "free" bonuses while working on something!
It is getting harder to find good products in stores now. They just want to sell the most cheaply made things now. Most of the old-school people who know better than to buy that are getting out of the field by now. That leaves people who don't know better and think that it's normal for a charger to take many hours, and only work for a year or so before you have to buy another one.
For old and unique, you need a Tungar charger. Not mains isolated normally, but they look neat.
I most certainly would love to have an old Tungar charger. Definitely need to disconnect the battery (+) and (-) terminals from the vehicle before attaching the Tungar charger! I've only seen them in pictures and heard about them, but it seems that they are only a reactor coil in series with the Tungar rectifier bulb. Half-wave rectified mains voltage with a current limit LOL!
@@davida1hiwaaynet Well, in the early days of DC mains, you had half the street at +240VDC, and the other half at -240VDC, so charging batteries all you needed was a 2 bar electric heater to use as a dropper resistor. Across the road from me is the old trolleybus substation, which has a separate mercury arc rectifier room on it, that used to hold the 6 pole rectifier unit that provided power to the trolleybus central power, and the cables are still buried in the ground as well. The poles used to hold them are still used for street lights.
@@SeanBZA
Love that old, early technology. It's good that they have repurposed the old poles for lighting instead of taking them down and losing that history!
There was a whole lot of interesting stuff going on back during the "War of the currents" era. Quite a fascinating part of history.
Great video
Thanks!
I took an old welder and turned it into a boost charger, by simply putting a 50A press fit diode into a chunk of aluminium, and then adding a 40A circuit breaker to the connection. That works well to boost a flat battery to start the car, just wind the current to minimum on the welder, and connect, and wait for the thermal breaker to trip on the roughly 60A charge current. Reset it once, and after the second trip it generally will start fine. All parts, from the press fit diode, the breaker and the wire to connect them were either salvaged or scrap parts. Air cooled variable current arc welder, that I added a fan to internally to cool it, so that you could have better than the 5% duty cycle it came with, the fan went into the bolt holes there already for a fan, and was an old 230VAC 160mm fan that came from some scrapped equipment, noisy, but can move air, and cools down the transformer when you stop welding, because the stray magnetic field while welding tends to lock the rotor of it solid. The welder was an auction buy, good work out of it over the years, and with aluminium wire very light compared to the old oil filled one I had. Best $5 spend ever, even if I did spend $10 in replacing the leads with decent welding cables, with actual copper in them, over the thin copper it came with.
That's a great use of an old welder. Would be adaptable to basically any battery voltage up to the open-circuit voltage of the welder.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Open circuit voltage is 40 to 70VAC, depending on just how much of the shunt you have in the core. Really nice welder, I have used it quite a bit over the years, till i got an inverter welder on sale, which won me over for the light weight plus the ability to weld thin steel with a thickish electrode, and the ease to wind up the wick as needed for thicker material.
Thank You, very much.
Great video. i have 2 to test.
Neat to see the insides and the point of failure as always! Funnily enough I have a very similar one, main difference is it is rated at 200A and has a mechanical timer. Its branded Motomaster/Canadian Tire which is a dominant hardware/auto store here) but made in USA. My guess is it was probably made in the same factory as yours. You cant beat the simplicity of chargers like that to jump start a car or quickly charge a dead battery. Its also great for hooking to a variac if you need need a variable source of high DC current (something you cant do with an electronic one).
Thanks for the comment!
Your idea about using a variac for variable DC power is a good point. I was on a project with a 24V NiCd battery bank, 300AH. It was made up of 20 individual cells. The battery had been left in storage for 5 years with a load connected. It was very much fully discharged! We called the battery manufacturer and got instructions to recondition the battery. They required each cell individually brought up to 1.2V at a maximum of 20A. To accomplish that without a special battery charger, I used a charger similar to this, with a variac! Worked like a charm. After each cell was somewhat balanced, the built-in battery charger was able to take over. In spite of sitting that long, discharged; those batteries still worked as designed! They were starting batteries for a diesel generator engine.
I've heard of Canadian Tire before. Seems to be popular and similar to a combination of our Sears / Tractor Supply / Harbor Freight style shops.
@@davida1hiwaaynet I'm amazed you were able to resurrect he NiCads. I was under the impression that they tended to short internally after long periods of complete discharge. I even remember seeing a project in one of the now defunct electronics magazines covering how to use a big capacitor and an scr to crate a burst of current to vaporize the shorts.
Canadian Tire is quite unique in terms of the mix of products and probably closest to Sears of the three places you mention: The focus is on tools, hardware, automotive parts, outdoors (camping, sports,garden) but also household hardware like kitchen items, cleaning items etc. If your in Canada sometime drop by a Canadian Tire to see a very unique Canadian store!
@@ElectromagneticVideos
I will definitely check out Canadian Tire if and when I get a chance to visit! My father lived in Rochester, NY and we crossed the border to see the Canadian side of Niagara Falls a few times. I was just a kid at the time, though.
As for the NiCd batteries, I think the reason the manufacturer recommended the cell-by-cell procedure was to discover any shorted cells, before they caused the remaining cells to be overcharged by the 24V charger (because it is set up for a 20-cell string, and if a cell was shorted, the string is effectively now less cells and would need a lower charge voltage). The cells did appear shorted at first, but as the charger and variac were used on them, they would start showing voltage. These were large format flooded cells, 300AH - so the dynamics may be different from smaller sizes such as power tool batteries.
@@davida1hiwaaynet That actually "close" to where I am (Ottawa) which is near the east of Lake Ontario.
That makes sense about the cell being huge. Didnt know there was such a thing as a flooded NiCad. I learn something every day!
@@ElectromagneticVideos
I'm with you on that! I strive to learn something every day.
J'apprend tout les jours .I did learned something.
Glad it helped!
Nice unit
Thanks! It was low-end for that brand but better than not having a charger at all.
I've got one of these, with a different paint job, and mine has a timer. The clock on the timer doesn't move, but otherwise works nice. Found it in the back of my scrapper's truck. I think mine was scrapped because the red and black clips were mixed up lol
That's funny about the clips being mixed up! Some people just don't have a clue, do they!
I have one of those and looks like i have a bad rectify diode, what value are those and where you get them?
Another great video. Would it be cost effective to add some filters, or do the batteries just don't care and do fine with the ripple?
Hi Mike. I have actually read that lead-acid batteries are helped by pulsed current; so the ripple current is a plus.
half wave rectified unregulated battery boiler haha. I have one that someone gave me years ago and it's great for boosting but I sure prefer a regulated charger for actual charging. Not the digital crap they sell now, just an old fashioned analog charger that puts out reasonable and predictable voltage.
You like the ferroresonant and or mag amp chargers I bet! Those are very good but pretty pricey for consumer grade stuff. I do have a 1978 vintage SCR regulated charger, though. It's pretty effective.
Aluminium transformer like my one, i modded with a fan
I bet a fan mod would be a good improvement. Might be able to improve the 5 minute duty cycle on the 50A setting LOL!
@@davida1hiwaaynet For sure, and you will have no trouble finding a suitable fan either in your collection.
For its size is that charger reasonably light David ? Lot of space inside ha
Yep, it's very light! This was a lower-end model with only a 30A continuous rating.
I bought one of those didnt worh took cover off wire unplugged off of switch
Did your needle still work with the switch being bad? I have a smaller 2/12/75 Shumacher unit I have had for over 20 years and the needle is bouncing up and down like there is a bad battery cell and no charge is coming out. Weirdest thing of all is that the charger worked fine last time I used it. It died while sitting on my shelf lol. I don't have much electronic equipment to test with and even this video is a bit above my ability but am thinking that replacing this cheap part might fix it.
All the needle does is show the current flowing. Your charger can still work without the amp meter working, but you need to test it. My amp meter went bad, so I just removed it and test with a multimeter. You can buy a multimeter at harbor freight for pretty cheaply. You won't regret it. My little harbor freight battery chargers amp meter went bad as well, but it still puts out 13.5v when I hook it up. The only way to know is with a multimeter set to DC voltage to test your output. If your charger went bad, it's probably the rectifying diodes or a blown fuse/circuit breaker.
i have a sears 2 -40-200 amp charger looks like the one u put breaker in mine has the Aluminum plate the biger cable with a diode attacted to it diode came apart cable just hangin there how do you put them in they look like they are pressed in the aluminum plate i thought might have replace those before i love this old charger any help would be Appreciated
I ended up lining the knurling on the diodes up with the marks left behind in the aluminum plate from the last ones and manually pressing them in with my fingers and thumb, which got them almost all the way seated, then used a block of aluminum with a hole drilled in it to protect the wire coming out and pressed it the rest of the way in with my vise. My charger is working again!
I have an old, old, old Heyer 6-12v battery charger. It's the one with 3 light bulbs. It will not charge unless I jump the cyclinode. Can you help, mybe send a wiring diagram???
Thank you,,, Leadskillet
I have a similar but older Schumacher charger. Its 6V and !2V with a load tester. Everything works except for the 30A 12V charge. 12V Boost works fine. Any idea where to check?
This is probably the switch not working.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Thank you. The Switch has a white (common?) on one row and 4 colored wires below. Easy enough to unplug the wires and meter it.
50A circuit breaker in a 150A charger. Makes me wonder which rectifiers they chose...
Yeah, the breaker is designed to protect the transformer and rectifier from exceeded duty-cycle. The continuous rating of the charger is 30A. At 50A you're limited to 5 minutes and 150A supported for only 2.5 seconds! As with most consumer-grade items they exaggerate the ratings and then put fine-print to clarify that the ratings are fake. LOL!
Does anyone have an idea why the charger produce only 10.2 volt. It's an old snap on ya165 with brand new diods,
Are you measuring it with a battery connected to the charger output? Does it charge a battery? It may be that only one of the two diodes (or diode groups) are working, therefore cutting your waveform to half-wave. A meter may average this out to a lower voltage.
Its an old manual battery charger with lo-mid-hi and boost, after connecting to battery the breaker in side started going crazy and just wonder if transformer was over heated and shorted or the switch, its an old charger and has no cooling fan, without battery
It appears they manufacturing in relation to the size was for sales purposes only .
I think you're probably mostly right. Part of it may be the cost of metal stamping dies to make the charger shell. It is very costly to make the dies to stamp out the shell of the charger, and the cost of the sheet metal is not too high. It's more economical to make one standardized shell and use it for a wide range of chargers, versus having several slightly different housings.
What to do if there is no voltage coming out from transformer secondary side?
If you have voltage on the primary going in, but not on the secondary coming out of the transformer, more than likely the problem is a blown thermal fuse inside the transformer. You may be able to replace the internal thermal fuse with an external fuse, if you can access it.
@@davida1hiwaaynet there is a fuse on top of the transformer that from what i can tell is working. There is current going through it. Could there be another fuse inside it? Or could the windings inside be shorted?
@@swiftqwrt7543
Normally, if a transformer has a shorted winding, it will draw a very high current and either blow a fuse, or burn out completely. If that happens, typically the transformer will appear burned, charred, or melted.
It's very hard for a transformer to "not work" when the winding is intact.
More than likely, there's a one-time thermal fuse embedded in the winding, which is open.
@@davida1hiwaaynet alright thanks. Great vid btw, very good information
I'm glad you found it useful!
Cheap jumper cables will overheat.
That is true. They need to be able to carry the current provided by the charger. This charger isn't able to continuously output more than 30 of so amps, so a moderate quality set of cables would suffice.
Sad the idiot company cant even put positve or negative on there cables if they go bad . I learned more of your vid then there shitty schematics they post if you dig
May be basic tests but certainly not your basic meter. 👍
Thanks for the comment! Are you talking about the Fluke 1587? Or the Kill-A-Watt test box?
For this job, one might not need a meter with insulation resistance modes. However, all the testing used modes used here are available on most multimeters. The Kill-A-Watt I do consider a basic meter which should be mandatory for anyone who works on stuff like this.
@@davida1hiwaaynet I like them both, but have not. Have several meters, analog and digital. Use clamp type for current measurements. Might get a Kill-A-Watt, don't think the Fluke. Kinda pricey.
@@joehead1294
That's good. The Kill-A-Watt is just so convenient and it will measure very low currents in the milliamp range. That is helpful for small home appliances. I've had the clamp meters be inaccurate at low currents since they just aren't really designed for that.
The Fluke is pricey but many of the industrial sites where I go for my "real job" require this sort of meter. Those cheap ones are very dicey on 480, if you know what I mean.
@@davida1hiwaaynet Yeah, I use a 10 loop multiplier for the low stuff, I guess you could make a 100 loop for more accuracy, I mostly work with DC.(retired automotive) Remember Fluke 8020A? Lotta good stuff out there nowadays.
@@joehead1294 Those loop multipliers are handy. I had a plug-in one, with two outlets and two windows, one was a 10x and the other 100x. Sadly that was ruined during some of my field service work years past. My helper thought it was a plug multi-tap and plugged a large load into the 100x side and melted the whole thing. I haven't used the old 8020A, but I expect they were the best of what was available at the time.
One of the best tutorial video on U-Tube,thank you for this video, I learned a lot….👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🍻🍻🍻🍺🍺🍺🥰🥰☮️☮️