Which smart battery charger?

[Triguy]

My old battery charger is not working and I want to replace with a smart charger. I am loooking at two chargers:

A Black & Decker VEC1095ABD Smart batter 25/10/2 Amp for $70



or the bigger A Black & Decker VEC1093DBD Smart batter 40/20/10/4 Amp charger for $98



The bigger one appears to have gone down in price at Amazon.

My needs are to be able to charge four types of batteries, but mainly for the trailer batteries:

• Charge two 6v deep cell batteries like the T-125's or T-145's that I intend to put on my trailer.
• Automobile battery
• Motorcycle battery
• Boat battery

I had spoken with the Trojan battery people recently about their T-145's and the women I spoke with suggested that the 25/10/2 am charger would be sufficient and she also indicated that the 40 amp mode on the larger one would not be useful for their batteries.

I was leaning towards the bigger one but maybe I'm not understanding the issues so your thoughts are much appreciated.

Which one would you buy?

[acadianbob]

You can put too much juice through your battery when trying to charge it and possibly ruin the battery. A decent rule of thumb is amperage should be about 10% of your amp hrs. So, a 115 amp hour group 27, for example, should receive about a 10 to 15 amp charge. More would be harmful. Less if fine, just takes a little longer to complete the charge. If you have a couple of T145 6 volts in parallel, you could probably do 25 amps. So, size of charger you buy should match what you are trying to charge . . . .

[Triguy]

Thanks Bob,
I like rules of thumb. So using this, the T-145's would have a 20-hr rate of 260 * 10% = 26 amps and the 25/10/2 would be about perfect.

For some reason I had thought that the "smart" part of the larger charger would step down accordingly.

[KyDan]

I have one that looks exactly like that black and decker
2/10/25. I mean exactly but it's not B&D.
I got it on Ebay from a power seller.
It was new and buy now price was closer to $50 incl
shipping.
I'm happy with it after 2 years and several uses including
jump starting my motorcycle and lawn mower on occasion.
Also use it to charge my 2 12v group 24 trailer batteries
when I'm on generator power.

[acadianbob]

And a correction, I meant two T145s in series . . .

Also, I bought a 15,10,2 Schumacher smart charger on Amazon for $35. It might be "light" for your application though. Works great on my 12 volt 130 amp hr Trojan battery.

Happy camping.

[Triguy]

Originally Posted by acadianbob

And a correction, I meant two T145s in series . . .

Yep - I knew what you meant.

Cheers.

[RONSTAR911]

I have that exact charger it actually made By Vector and is very good. Yes the SMART charger will step down and ONLY allow the battery to charge at the rate that is safe. they have come a long way from the goood old chargers. they also help desulfate the battery and have several other features that make them superior to other chargers. The shumakers are also very good and have the same smart charge technology. Of coarse the benefit is you dont have to run your generator for very long to properly charge your batteries. NOTE: these are pulse powersupplys and do not like modified sine wave generators! Any newer honda or sine wave generator will run them fine. dont ask how I found out about the cheap generator problem. killed the ice machine too
regards,
Ron Y

[Triguy]

Ron, that's good information.

I haven't picked up the charger, yet. Can someone clarify a couple of charging questions? I have not used a charger with 6v batteries before.

Does the charger charge both 6v's wired in series at the same time just like it would charge one 12v? So, attach the charger to one battery and both charge?

Conversely, are these chargers able to charge one 6v at a time (or do they need to charge at 12v's)?

[Glenn5995]

I have been using the Black and Decker VEC1093DBD for several years with good results:



It also has the 110 amp engine start feature which is not listed in the Amazon description. Here is the info from Black and Decker:

Black & Decker Tools | 110 Amp Engine Start - 40 Amp / 20 Amp / 10 Amp / 4 Amp Continuous Charge Rates - Smart Battery Charger

It is the same as the Vector models. Black and Decker bought out/took over Vector. There are still a few Vectors models out there, but they are becoming few. If you find one, they are the same as the Black and Decker units.

It does not have a 6-volt setting, so you cannot charge a single 6-volt battery, but according to my understanding should be able to charge 2 6-volts wired in series together.

The manual lists the minimum AH rating with which to use the 40-amp charge rate. I would have to look to see what it is, but my two Trojan SCS225s in parallel exceeded that and I use the 40-amp charge all the time and have not had any issues. My batteries are currently 4 years old. It will step down the charge rate if it is too great, hence being a "smart charger". A few times where my batteries were only down a little and I put the charger on at 40-amps, it dropped right away down to 35, 30, 25 or whatever was sufficient. When the batteries are down more, it will charge for quite a while at 40-amps before it starts dropping off.

Hope this helps.

[Triguy]

Thanks Glenn.

By the way, I called the tech number at Stanley Black & Decker to see what they would say. Apparently the B&D model is being phased out. The tech recommended their Stanley Automatic Chargers because they will do a better job charging deeply discharged batteries and because its obviously simpler to use.