Did a stupid thing and ran down the battery. Now it's on a 12V 2/6 amp charger. Every two hrs., I remove the charger from the AC source, negative ground clamp, and positive clamp and attempt to crank the engine.
Is is necessary for safety purposes to disable the charger, or can I leave it connected while testing to see if the engine cranks over?
Thanks.
First off allow that little charger overnight to do the job with the battery removed from the tractor or the + terminal disconnected.
Yes you should always disconnect it while trying to start.
Leave it connected. The extra boost it provides may enable you to start your machine before the battery is fully charged.
Look at the two answers above from HeyBub and Colbyt. This is a text book example of why you don't ask an automotive related question in this group. One would think with a name of alt.home.repai it would be obvious but obviously not.
Why on earth would you do that?
Doesn't hurt the charger to leave it on but by all means let it charge for 24 hours. If the battery is viable good. If not it may start after 24 hours but not after it sits for 3 or 4 days. I just replaced the 300 CCA battery on my Deere 155. Would crank fine unless it sat for 3 days. The battery was 10 years old.
Many of these trickle chargers are designed to be left connected to batteries. It certainly won't hurt it. Every machine I have, has an onboard trickle charger, this way if a machine is not used for months, the battery doesn't die. They don't charge very rapidly, so it'll need a good 8 hrs of more to fully charge it, if the battery is in good condition.
Depends on whether alt.home.repair means "repairing THE home" or "repairing AT home"
That said, where else would one go for advice on shearing sheep, folding paper airplanes, or framing a marriage proposal (I like "Will you be my first wife?")?
Unless the charger is specifically designed to handle 'boost' voltages, the current drawn by starting will ruin the diodes. For a small trickle charger, the few amps provided over the battery capacity would have no noticeable effect on starting results, so the sensible thing is disconnect. You may also be surprised to find that recommendation in your owners manual.
Joe.
Leave it charging 24 hours or it will never charge up the way you are doing it. Funny you should mention it, I just went to start my garden tractor that I use only for snow blowing in the winter. The battery was too low to start it. Was fine all winter, it's only a year old. It's taking a long time to charge too, as if it has been down for some time. I have a taper charger so I'll know when it's full up again when it tapers down to zero. Right now it's drawing 2 amps. Started at 6 amps. If it don't taper down, time for a new one. (defective?)
Chuckle. Living alone, and for several years only had one car. Best forty bucks I ever spent when living in the apartments was that Shumaker (sp?) boost charger and long extension cord. Paid for itself the first time I didn't have to call a tow truck. Haven't used it in years, now that I park inside my own damn garage, and have 2 vastly more reliable cars. But keeping it just in case.
And what's an owner's manual? One of them paper book things? They never seem to be included at the auctions and yard sales....
I knew a guy who would introduce his wife as "my first wife". They're divorced now.
A slow charge is best**. When I used my 1 amp charger on a full size car battery, for a big car, it took 24 hours to charge from dead. Since yours is 2 amp, I'd figure 12 hours, or less if the battery is smaller. Maybe a little les yet since 24 might not have been needed.
If set on 6 amps, 4 hours of course.
**Although some fancy new ones say they charge 80% fast and then slow down towards the end. I don't know about that.Now I use a 10 amp charger and I can often get by on ten minutes or less before it will start**, and I don't disconnect it before trying. But they aren't the original diodes, so I guess that doesn't help you. I couldn't get those square, cracker-like selenium diodes anymore, so I used a bunch of 2 amp tophat diodes in parallel***.
**I've disabled my lights-on buzzer switch for complicated reasons. ***The original story of the 10 amp charger is more intersting. 35 years ago, I found it with nothing nearby on the sidewalk in Queens. Took it home and it woudln't work. Bad diodes. Looked all over NYC for selenium diodes that could carry 10 amps. Didn't know why they should be selenium, but that's what they used in the first place.Coudn't find them, forgot out the thing for 5 years, and when I tried again to fix it, it worked fine. I don't use it often but it worked fine for 20 years. Then the diodes went bad again!! Go figure.
I used to work with a guy like that. ...except that he had a wife number two between two instances of wife number one. A mid-life thing.
Selenium diodes were 1930's, 1940's, and very early 1950's, they were used because there were no other diodes available that could take the current thru them that the selenium diodes could take. Modern-day diodes came along in the early 1950's just before the invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories revolutionized the world as we know it today.
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Thanks. Very interesting. No wonder I couldn't find them. I found the charger between 1970 and 1978, and it's the kind that a gas station would have had, with a heavy duty 6/off/12 volt switch, an ammeter, long heavy leads with big alligator clips, extra-length hoizontal legs to keep it from falling over, and a rounded comfortable metal handle, so it could have been 20 years old when I found it. That would make it about 55 years old now, all original except the diodes and the wires to the alligator clips (which were cracking all over the place and all the way to the copper when I replaced them 10 or 20 years ago.)
I got my one-amp charger from my cousin Morris, who gave me his '50 Oldmobile in 1965, when I was 18 and he was at least over 80 and not going to drive anymore. At the same time he gave me the battery charger. The car had a 6-volt battery but the charger would do either
6 or 12 volts. It looked like new but I'm sure he didn't buy it the last year he had the car. It doesn't look older than 1955? because it still has a modern look, with a glossy almost metallic paint finish on five sides and a face plate that still looks modern also (not that I know what face-plates looked like in the 50's. And a plastic slide switch for 6 to 12 volts.That charger also had selenium diode in a bridge arrangement and though it failed too, I found a simllar replacement. The original ones fit in the case of course, but the replacement which I got at a surplus store in the 70's was about the size of two cigarrette packs front to back, so it had to be mounted standing on the top of the whole thing, making it look like some sort of robot head.
What's most interesting about it was that I had the car in Chicago for one winter and it was very cold, so I ran an extension cord from the pantry of the house we lived in to the sign at parking lot in the back. I placed the charger in an empty space near the battery and ran the cord out the grill. Every time I parked, I plugged the car in and left it that way until I left again.
ONce it got caught in the radiator fan and the wires ripped out, but I repaired that.
But the 6 volts didn't seem to do a good job of charging it so I put it on 12 volts. It had a glass circuit breaker that looked like like a little Xmas tree light (with no light). A little over a half-inch long and less than a quarter inch in diameter. It would trip every
90 seconds and reset 30 seconds later. Since I went to school in walking distance, the car was home more than 90% of the time, and the circuit breaker reset every 2 minutes for the whole winter. 720 times a a day for at least 90 days, at least 7000 times. But that part still works fine.The whole thing works fine, but I'm too impatient to use it for car batteries now.
I have a marine trolling battery, which sadly I trusted to a Harbor Freight trickle charger. A couple months later, the battery was way low of water, and filling wtih distilled didn't bring it back to life. I credit the HF float charger (wall wart plug with a cord and couple of clips) with killing my battery. I should not have left the charger on.
Starting batteries such as garden tractor batteries. If they are deeply discharged, that may do enough damage that the battery won't work again. The overnight charge is a good idea. But, it may very well be time for a replacement battery.
I also find a car battery charger to be useful.
The "jumper packs" with the internal battery are useful, also. I've got one in each vehicle, and have used them several times. I bought a
22 amp jumper pack from Harbor Freight, one time. Sixty bucks. It didn't work the once I needed it. Took it back. Bought a 17 amp one from NAPA auto supply. Hundred bucks, but at least it does the job.
While I have no desire to start a flame war, I do feel the need to point out that some of us can read and do read the manuals that came with various devices.
For that reason I will stand by the initial answer I posted to OP's question. For you I suggest RTFM for charging instructions included with most chargers and the warnings that are included in the better written tractor manuals.
Colbyt
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