Automobile Battery Charger

An automobile battery charger is a vital item of equipment for your home garage because it can keep your automobile's 12 volt battery fully charged at all times.

All 12 volt battery chargers designed to work with a car's lead-acid rechargeable battery can charge that battery when it runs down. But not all automobile battery chargers are created equal.

The cheapest type of battery charger is the simple and uncomplicated trickle charger, which means it is designed to charge your battery at the slowest practical rate. The engineers who design these units calculate the smallest amperage (charge rate) that will get the battery charged really slowly, and never be enough - at least in theory - to overcharge your car battery.

You don't ever want to over-charge your car's battery, because that will shorten the life of the battery. And overcharging for a long time will overheat and 'kill' that rechargeable battery, making it unable to hold a charge in future and no use for starting and running your automobile.

That is something certainly you do not want, but it is more likely to occur if you buy a cheap automobile battery charger - one without any kind of 'smarts'.

On the other hand, if you purchase a 'smart' charger, that auto battery charger is designed to switch off the battery charge before the battery can be overcharged and damaged.

The simplest, and cheapest, of the 'smarter' car chargers use a timing circuit that turns off the charging process after so many hours - again this is calculated by the circuit's design engineers when they first make the battery chargers. The problem with timer-based battery chargers is that they cannot adjust the charge process to give the best-possible charge for your car battery. That all depends on how old the battery is, how will it has been looked after, and the exact chemical composition of the electrolyte in each battery cell.

A really 'smart' auto battery charger will measure your automobile battery when you first hook it to the charger, and will immediately sense the condition of your battery. If the 12 volt car battery has a dead or shorted cell (they have six 2 volt cells) the smart charger will inform you right away.

There is no point in trying to charge a damaged battery like that, it will never hold a charge properly and cannot supply enough juice (electrical energy) to crank your engine over fast enough to start the car. You just have to buy a new car battery in that case. However, your smart charger would have just saved you from the frustration of trying to charge a useless battery for hours or even days...

That is why it is well worth purchasing a smart automobile battery charger instead of a more basic model.