Battery chargers are simple enough technology I am not too worried about brand. I have a Harbor Freight 10 amp/2 amp with 55 amp boost and am satisfied with it.

Take a 20% off coupon from your Sunday paper, or wait till it is on sale. Under $30.

My second choice is Schumaker, though, as I say, brand is relatively unimportant.as far as I am concerned.

Here you go. The best maintenance charger ever designed, just read the reviews. I put it on my tractors overnight with the clips once a month when they are not in use. If you want you can leave this charger on all the time while in storage and they provide battery connectors for that purpose. For twenty bucks shipped right to your door you can't beat it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009IBJAS/ref=oss_product

I've not had any HF electrics before. May be worth checking out. My Shumaker that has similar specs is about 3 years old.That's par for the course on how long they seem to last. I've used the 50AMP jump feature maybe like 3 times and as far as I know it works. It seems as though the 2 amp feature works , but the auto charge 10a feature- which is what i normally use is getting strange. It seems as though they last me about 3 years. It occurs to be the big cart style is probably more better, but I don't want to deal with the size.

Tom,

That is weird they don't last you longer. I had a "Dart" that was my grandfathers that I had to repair the wire going to the clamps and then had for decades (my dad may still have it).

My brother had a Shumaker that eventually a diode blew, but he used it for over 5 years before that happened. I replaced the diodes and it lasted him for many years after that. I wonder if that is what happened to yours. You don't happen to have access to an oscilloscope by any chance do you?

I have had the HF for about 5 years and have used it rather regularly. My only complaint is that the switches are hard to slide so often you slide too far once the move. But they have been consistent and don't seem to be wearing out.

I think it likely the only difference between the small portable and the big shop-rollabouts is the case. After all there is not much to them, just a transformer and diodes and a meter and some switches. SOme of the shop style ones have a timer.

If you can get access to an o'scope see what the output looks like and maybe we can fix/upgrade your broken one.

cheers

I got three, One I brought in 1975, Other brought in 1983 and is really beat up glass broken needle don't move switch hard to switch but it still works. the third on old boat battery Has 50, 10, 2 amp charge plus continuious .02 amp it's 1990 model.

I have yet to tear one up or wear them out. The beat up one the one I loan out. Don't let nobody touch the other two. IMO with cucuit boards made cheaper the older ones maybe better built, but I'll probably never need new one? The ones I got are heavy duty mostly heavy!!

I've been pleased with my 4-year-old Schumaker SuperCharge SC-6500A. I, too, wonder why yours didn't last longer.

My Schumaker charger is so old you'd need to do a carbon test to date it. It served honorably as the main charger for 10 years in my motorcycle shop and then went into private practice.

I've come across quite a few dead chargers in the last 10 years and upon internal inspection I can tell you that in the case of most brands, including Schumaker, that the circuit boards are a lot thinner and of a much lower quality phenolic and not glass, even the wiring is of lower quality, and the soldering techniques (if I can call contemporary production soldering "technique") are of a poorer execution than in the past. Production QC today guarantees neither quality nor control.

We are victims of the market screaming "cheaper" and we're getting exactly what (the majority of us) asked for so grin and bear it.

Milacqua's favorite charger has it's share of complaints too. Storied names of the past on a box on the shelf today mean little to nothing cause the name is what is bought and paid for by some pacific rim conglomerate a la Zenith, Crosley, and such.

Want a good charger? Cruise the thrift stores and flea markets and find an old, working Schumaker. clean it up and charge away and away and away and away...

There is NO contemporary charger or maintainer that I would leave unattended plugged into an AC outlet, in my home or garage, connected to a battery for any period of time... except my old Schumaker.

Out of sight... out of mind... out of luck sooner or later.

Just a bit of food for thought.
If you EVER have plugged in the charger to the 120 VAC power BEFORE you connected the 12 VDC charging leads to the battery........you might have had some shorting of the alligator clips against each other.
Additionally, and possibly worse is to try cranking the engine too soon after beginning the charge cycle with the charger still connected to the battery.
This amounts to a dead short (because the starter current draw is far higher than the charger rating) and a small charger (2 to 15 AMP) simply is not built for that type of duty unless it features a "boost start" selection.
Whether the damage is to the rectifying diode(s) or to the transformer secondary (12V) windings is moot, you still have a useless charger.
Some small chargers have an overcurrent circuit breaker to help protect the charger against this, but I will guess that most small chargers DO NOT feature a breaker (price target point considerations) unless they have a boost start option.

The charger that I'm looking to replace is likely not treated the best. It gets sent away with folks who need it. I also have a 6a /2 Schumacher that is metal, output seems low. 4- 1.5a is it's MO. My normal use is for rider batteries whilst I'm working on it or to toss a battery on for an afternoon before testing. The other day, I put the charger in question on my truck. It was working fine and then I moved it over and it started bouncing. Funky circuit board makes sense. I see chargers that are high frequency, have a desulphation cycle etc , but if I just had a sturdier charger. . .

Here is a link that might be useful: Schumacher Website

A good rule of thumb for today's chargers... if you don't grumble at the price then look at better models.