welcome back to Steve Robb reviews as you can see behind me here is some battery chargers battery
maintainer and memory saver today I'm going to talk a little bit about battery chargers
and battery maintainer I'm gonna express my own views on the subject and one thing I'd like to
say is what I like to do well a lot of people don't agree and they like to do their own thing
and I just say okay fine everybody can choose what they want the number one thing that I find
very odd is I'll have people they call me up and they say Steve my vehicle is dead could you come
over and take a look at it I go over there and the battery is completely discharged I put my meter on
it and it's like maybe three four volts at that stage I say go buy a new battery and they say
no no no no I just want you to boost it and by the way this one here is a booster as well as a
battery charger I want I want to just boost it and we'll see what happens and I say well I'll
tell you what's gonna happen most of the time in my experience when you have a battery that's
been discharged that bad and it's not say like a battery that's under a year old well it's pretty
well garbage as far as I'm concerned but there's a lot of people out there say no no no we're just I
just want to boost it start the vehicle and off I go and I said okay but just remember this the
next call you might make is I've got a light on - saying alternator well if you've ever busted a
vehicle that's been discharged that bad well now your alternator goes full field charges like at
a hundred amps or whatever it's rated for and you could pretty well fry an egg on the top of
your alternator and is it worth $100 battery to fry a $500 alternator and the labor involved all
the work that's involved with it well apparently a lot of people say well yes it is because they just
really don't know and when you explain it to them they still really don't care so let's talk about
some experiences that I've had and I'll show you what I use what I like and what I don't like and
what you should do when you want to store your battery over the winter I've got two batteries
in there one for my diesel log splitter and one for my daughter's motorcycle I'll show you them
let's get to these ones right here I'll talk a little bit about them and you guys let me know
in the comments below whether you like to actually charge your battery up and then start your vehicle
or just boost your vehicle and let your alternator do all the work for you so let's get do this right
now and I'll talk about some of the the units that I have and what I like about them and what I don't
well let's start off with this one right here now this here I've had for many many many years and
I bought this because that was the only thing that most people used on the farm and that was
if you take a look at the dial here yeah you've got six volt twelve volt at 10 amp 12 volt a 30
amp charge and then you got a boost feature and that I'll tell you what I've never have run into
a vehicle where the boost feature didn't work to charge it up and I like this one the best for a
charger compared to these small little ones that are more or less maintained errs only and I really
don't like these kind anymore I have them just for backups for backups but you know what they're
not very good and this is what I use here when you take a battery out of a newer vehicle today
you like to maintain all the memory presets and everything and you can actually just leave this
plugged into this for any extended period of time and it will charge it'll keep your system charged
up so that well the vehicle doesn't even know that you've disconnected the battery and you just plug
it into your data link connector everybody's got one on their vehicle and it charges not charges
it maintains all the power with a battery that's in here and of course it's got a light on here for
green and if you're using it and we'll go on red well you know you're discharged a battery but you
know what for any extended period of time I just plug it into the outlet and you can leave it on
for as long as you like and it'll keep everything maintained now these small little ones here like
I paid $10 for each one of these on sale and they're probably worth $10 and that's about it
I find they're not that reliable to tell you the truth and as the years gone by well they're just
not that good it's hard to explain why they're not that good but a lot of times they'll just stop and
maybe they got to reset themselves or something but they just stopped especially one like this
which I think was ten dollars as well and it worked for a long time it still does work but
you know what I just don't like these transformer type that don't actually well they don't shut off
very much very good so this one here I like the best out of all of them for charging a battery up
and I like to take the battery rate out of the vehicle to charge because I've noticed there's
a big difference between putting a charger on with the battery cables attached compared to
taking the battery out or just taking the cables off and charging it in the vehicle I've noticed
a huge difference and this is the one that I like so let's go out to my shed where I have the
motorcycle and small little utility battery on the charger and I'll show you what I have there and
I really like these two units as well well let's go in the shed here and I'll show you inside and
here this is the motorcycle battery hooked up now this particular brand here si Tek guys this is one
terrific charger and dala I'll just show you here and you know it says motorcycle vehicle and also
charging in cold weather now I've had this for about ten years and you could see it's starting
to get like some corrosion around the base and everything but you know what it is a terrific
brand does a terrific job and the other one I'll show you here is on my wall so you have to go
all the way down here and this is it right here and that battery charger there maintainer called
battery tender that's pretty much my go-to now I won't buy any other it's foolproof spark proof
you can't hook it up wrong it is just terrific so should you get this let's talk about should
you buy one of these battery tenders well should you buy one of them battery tenders no that's a
brand name and all users watch my channel for a long time know that I don't sell anything I'm just
reviewing things that I've bought myself and my experience with it now I do watch a lot of YouTube
like all of you do as well and I have run across so many of my friends on YouTube that have bought
low-cost chargers like $10 chargers and maintained errs and that kind of stuff well two of my buddies
they had fires in their small little like shop where these things just melt it up and you know it
didn't burn their shop down or anything but they all got melted and distorted and you could tell it
there was like an internal fire electrically inside of them and you know you'll only get
what you pay for right so that little battery tender Junior I believe it's like three quarters
of an of an amp maintaining charge that's all you really need you don't need no big fancy equipment
as far as I'm concerned there are specialized batteries out there that you know I guess you
have specialized equipment but generally I really like that battery tender there's different models
of them and some are waterproof and some are bigger some are you know but that's about the
smallest one there and I think I paid on sale like 35 bucks I think was like $35 many years ago and
every winter its flawless it just does its job and that's that's all you want but for the rest
of these if if I want to charge up a battery this is the only thing that I use I don't use anything
else because when you think about it you try to charge up a battery you know even on an amp or 2
amp or 3 amp or 4 amp that's that's 4 amp an hour if you're down a hundred amps one's gonna take
you to charge that thing up right so I use this they've been using these on the farm for years
and years and years they work to do their job and they're heavy it's a big heavy transformer paste
unit it's not Mickey Mouse and I think I paid well it's been a long time well over 10 years I think
you can still buy them today for under 150 bucks they're well worth the money and when you change
your battery ya put one of these maintainer zon that keeps your system completely energized so
that the vehicle doesn't even know that you've changed the battery and on some vehicles well
if you don't do that you're gonna have all kinds of problems fault lights or vehicle not running
right there's all kinds of problems that can be caused because your battery was taken out or if
it gets completely discharged while at that point well it really doesn't matter right but I'd like
to know how many of you I've run across somebody in a parking lot and their battery is completely
discharged and they just want a boost right well you know there's been so many instances of people
hooking up the cables wrong and this kind of stuff the part guy got the vehicle started but
the vehicle that was the boosting vehicle well it don't start no more now so I mean yeah there's
all kinds of you know risks involved and using a set of jumper cables to boost a battery them
small little booster packs that you see you know them ones that just got small little cables on the
end the hook on I think they're terrific I don't have any of them but I see that a lot of people
use them and you can boost vehicle no problem with them this one here yeah you have to plug into your
electric outlet but you know when you think about it a lot of people seem to go back many many many
years at least if you're my age and they think it's just okay today to just boost the vehicle and
let your alternator do all the charging because if you have a you know like a battery that's
completely discharged and you're only 10 minutes away from home how much of a charge you think you
just got well you didn't get too much of a charge if you're only ten minutes away I don't care what
kind of an alternator you have and so there's some things you could think about and for me how many
people actually take the battery cables off put a maintainer on and then charge most of the people
that I know they actually just put the charging cables right on it and for me there's too many
unknowns I'm not an expert I'm not an automotive technician and for me there's too many things
unknown how do I know that this might not have a malfunctioned and have all kinds of high voltage
going down them lines I don't know right so I mean I like to play everything on the safe side
if I can especially if it's not my vehicle so but overall these ones here yeah you know what for ten
dollars I kind of pass on them so far I have not seen any problems on the Battery Tender brand like
I say I'm not trying to sell anybody anything but that's the only brand that I will use out in the
future because I have so many friends that have used that particular brand and you know the small
little one the battery tender junior there and I've had great success like I have so thanks for
joining me here today I hope you found this and farm it up and if you haven't seen this channel
before well you're welcome to subscribe come back again and let's have some more fun Cheers
you