A good all round Smart Charger Rally 7633 20Amp

[MikeRuth]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004UR165C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Wanted to give a quick review of a good little all around charger. In the past I've been using Schumacher for a general purpose battery charger, the XC-10. It was a 10 amp smart charger but like all of course set to lawyer values. But recently it didn't matter what it was connected to, it would push the voltage up to 16.3 volts and that was it. I didn't give it a chance to cook anything and decided it was time for something else. Now I have a Schumacher 1.5 amp maintainer that has worked well for many a year and still does. But this last incident has left a bad taste in my mouth with Schumacher.

So I went with a charger that I hadn't heard of before but had decent reviews, in fact one reviewer claims to be a retired battery and charger engineer who gave it a thumbs up. Ok so for $65.00 and a 20 amp rating I thought it was a fair deal and gave it a try. 

The case is a bit unique in it's triangular upright design and that makes it handy to carry around. +1. 
The case is also cheap plastic but hey what do ya expect from across the water. 
The wiring is a of good quality and certainly large enough gauge but the battery clamps...ahh well a little on the cheap side, but do work OK. At 20 amps they warmed up a bit but then again I don't think that's out of line for most clamps. As for using it, connect your clamps, plug it into 120 VAC and then select the charge rate you want, then press the power button. It begins. There is a battery status indicator that should have been left off! I still haven't quite figured out at what voltages it changes status. But I always monitor the voltage with a DVM. 
I think it would have been more useful to simply put an accurate volt meter in. I may do that later. 

After using it now on a couple different batteries I've come to the conclusion that the bulk rate is set at 14.6 Volts and that's not bad. Hey I know we want 14.8 for our beloved GC2's but this is just a general purpose charger.  Float seems to be about 13.4. 

Tonight I pulled down my GC2 batteries about 15% or so and then hooked it up, bam right off the bat a full 20 amps. since they were down far it didn't take but about 10 minutes for it to start showing less and less current. I'll check later to see what we have when it goes into float. 
I'm home during the week now so having this gives me something to pump them up with in times of need, the solar can top them off during the day. 

So over all for a simple fair priced shore power unit I'd have to say it's a decent unit worth checking out. 

Mike R

 

[SternWake]

Thanks for the review.

I just typed a rather lengthy response, and then hitting CTRL instead of shift and some letter sent it elsewhere and caused a minor curse fest, so I will revert to caveman noun verb speak.

Time at absorption voltage huge factor in reaching full charge.
Amperage to hold absorption voltages great indicator of state of charge
But....
Heavily cycled battery act funny
14.5v+ ABSV held for hours, charger goto float, but hydrometer say battery still not fully charged.
Sometimes 6 hours at ABSV cannot do what 15.5 to 16V can do in 40 minutes.

Maximum specific gravity = 100% state of charge.

How can this be determined without hydrometer?
It can't.

hydrometer = flooded battery truth serum

Heavy cycling of battery requires a different charge regimen than a starting battery accidently depleted once.
Most smart chargers are designed for the latter.

Deep cyclers( Van dwellers) benefit from chargers which can do Equalization voltages when the cycler so requests.

Equalization voltages can be detrimental to some appliances still hooked to the battery.
Absorption fridge circuit boards are known to be susceptible to voltages over 15v. It does not matter if they are running on propane at the time, the circuit board still requires ~12vDC.

Trojan has a recommended recharge rate of 10 to 13% of battery capacity

10% of 230AH is 23 amps, so this linked charger is close. Reports of warm wires at 20 amps is disappointing. My Schumacher wires got hot at 25 amps. Cheap 12awg chinese copper that turned green and black when cut and stripped.

My Ideal charger would have a dial for absorption voltage, a dial for the maximum desired amperage, a dial for time to hold absorption voltage, a dial to trigger float voltage when amps required to hold absorption voltage fall below such and such a voltage. It would Also have an adjustable float voltage, and temperature compensation with a sensor on the battery itself.

Since there is no charger that does this, I use an adjustable voltage 40 amp power supply, and I will blast either of my 2 separately cycled batteries with this, for I do not fear a high amp recharge, and my AGM battery simply requires it and revels in 40+ amps when depleted. My Flooded battery does not seem to protest either, but USbattery recommends this battery get only 13 amps until 14.7v is reached at which point amps taper.

Those who want to see how well their charging source is doing, and have flooded batteries:
http://www.amazon.com/OTC-4619-Prof...im_auto_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=11P42CCCD6HY4JJ1B8PE

One basically is flying blind without it.
Reach for the high green

 

[MikeRuth]

Same Hydrometer I use, one of the best I think.

Good words, and to all others, again this is just a good all round shop/starting battery charger. Gets things going etc.
I'd want the same as Sternwake here but if that's on the market it's gonna take a big chunk of change or as he does, manually charge them. Been there done that, will do it again, but usually don't have time to keep an eye on things.