Nothing last forever my friend. The average life span of a battery is 3 to 5 years. Once the the battery expires its time for a new one and it won't hold a charge
@@jeromemeyers4167 I'm merely talking about a new or recent battery that has gone completely dead and the battery charger won't charge it. It doesn't have to be a bad battery it could be a a battery that's just completely drained. Older manual battery chargers would charge a completely drained battery.
I had this problem last year. took the battery into my warm house ..... hooked it up to my battery booster pack 3 times for 20 secs at a time .... throws enough energy to trick the "smart" charger to begin its cycle. If you have a booster and are out and about and you find your battery is dead flat ... of course hooking the booster up will not start your car. You must first disconnect the battery cables, then, hook the booster cables up only to the disconnected cables ..... bi passes the dead battery, starts every time.
Thanks for this video. Worked like a charm. Tried to charge it with a "smart" charger for two days with no luck. This had the battery charging in no time.
After trying to charge a 3 ,1/2 year old battery ( with a warranty of 3 years) , I tried for 2 days...nothing . Just about to spend $95 on a new one, and found this video. The battery is now fully charged, brilliant fix thanks
I once put enough charge in a dead 12V car battery using a 9V PP3 battery, it added just enough power to get the smart charger to turn on. I read it somewhere, tried it and it worked.
Thanks for the video! My B&D "smart" charger had never failed me, but it just kept clicking off when I attempted to charge my Chevy Silverado dead battery which had been setting idle for over three weeks! I followed your video using a "ghost" battery removed from my private aircraft and it worked like a charm! (I first tried a 9V radio battery, but couldn't get that to work.) Thanks for the "tip" and the very clear and easy procedures for the fix!
I do something similar. I 'briefly' touch jumpers from good battery to totally bad battery. 1 second or less in case dead battery has short, etc...Then I disconnect and just attach charger to dead battery. More times than not, the quick connection above will bring the voltage high enough on your battery to get the charger going.
Great video, thanks for posting! I had two RV batteries hooked up in parallel on my camper. I forgot to disconnect the leads when I put it in storage. Therefore with the parasitic drain from the camper, it drained my 2 batteries down to 1 volt. I thought, no problem. I'll hook up my smart charger. The batteries wouldn't take a charge. I got my 2000 watt portable generator out and it has a 12v connection to hook up to your battery. I hooked it up and ran the generator for about 10 minutes or so. That was just good enough for my smart charger to detect a enough voltage to start charging. I was thankful, being those 2 batteries were only a year old. These smart chargers are a PIA!
Good Lord! My intelligent chargers will try down to 9 volts. I have used alarm panel batteries to trick the charger to just get it started charging for mowers and such. Very helpful video! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much! I just tried to charge my motorcycle battery with my smart charger and it would not change. Used your trick and I am up and running! Thanks...
So glad I came across your video, my son's motorbike battery had 0.5v in it which meant my Optimate 2 would not start charging. Wired the bike battery up to a car battery then clipped the charger to the car battery and after 3hrs had 6v in the bike battery and now it's on charge direct with the charger 👍🏻
Can be done with two intelligent chargers PROVIDING that at least one has the option to do an engine start. Hit the battery with the engine start then hit it with the ‘intellijunk’ charger. I tell you one thing. Even if it takes a knife fight i am never walking past a 1980s schumacher battery charger at a garage sale again!
I remember being a kid and seeing what my dad and others used as battery chargers: a box on wheels that let you choose 2amp, 10amp, and 50 amp settings. I've seen better ones with 100 amp ranges. When that thing came out, dead battery problems were solved, very quickly. It blows my mind that we live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for products to decline in quality and capability.
I’ve always had a spare car battery good solid crank on timber blocks on the ground and still using old school trickle charger to this day. I’ve looked after it extremely well. Hook up fully charged high crank battery to any dead battery in a car or motorcycle or anything and bang kicks it in the guts. Anyway thanks for the advice
I HATE the microprocessor controlled chargers! I actually threw out a good battery because my new Stanley charger stopped charging after a few seconds and went to a zero-effective, never ending "Reconditioning Battery" state. I let the NEW battery on my seldom used farm truck run down again and yep, the Stanley said "NO." After watching your video I realized that if I supplied enough voltage, the charger would sense the battery and charge it. I used the Engine Start feature on the Stanley. It supplies a heavier charge for 60 seconds. After about 10 consecutive Engine Start cycles, my battery had enough voltage to be sensed, and it charged perfectly Thanks for the "lead!"
This is excellent help. I have a battery in my Subaru which is reading about 11.7 volts and which is not enough to turn the engine over. The problem is that I have bought a new Ring smart charger to replace my old broken non smart charger and the new charger is not recognising the battery-even at 11.7!. I had thought today that the new charger was faulty but in order to prove/disprove that, I shall follow your steps in this video to see whether it's the new charger at fault or whether the battery is simply not at a voltage which the charger will recognise. Thank you.
You should run the positive charger lead to the dead battery and the negative to the good battery so that you are not decreasing the life of the good battery. Still fools a smart charger but does so in a better more efficient manner.
Thank you for this video…I have a Promaster Van…😢Simple question….When you connected smart charger to good battery…how did you have room on the battery posts to connect both jumper and charger clamps? Please don’t laugh at me…this is my first attempt at being a car mechanic….These batteries are very expensive so I have to try!😊 Thank you for your help!
Brilliant lesson & thank you my friend! To me it looks like the manufactures of batteries And chargers are in cahoots & simply taking the piss out of the pubic and just trying to screw us for every single coin we have in our already empty pockets!
So you have to have a good battery to charge a dead battery with a smart charger. What good are they ? So if I’m sitting at home with a dead battery and no other batteries around I still can’t charge my dead battery. I guess that’s the new American way. Good information Josh.
Yeah, these new battery chargers are garbage. I have one old style left that will throw voltage into whatever I connect it to. I absolutely hate the new style chargers, but it's all you can find these days. It took me a bit to figure out this workaround so I thought I'd share for anyone else in the same boat. I've seen the threshold voltage on these chargers as high as 12v. If I have 12v on a battery, it really doesn't need charged.
Thanks! I just bought a viking "smart" charger but my battery is below the threshold (10v). I also have a travel viking battery jumper. I'll use them together. So ridiculous lol 😅
I got my hands on an older manual charger this week also. I opened it up tonight to go through it and check it out, but so far all is looking well with it.
Anyone else looking for a manual charger, I haven't found any. The best option I found is harbor freight's analog style charger. It requires 7V on the leads but you can google the hack that puts a switch between 2 solder joints so you can bypass the 7v safety mechanism.
@@thebluelunarmonkey Harbor Freight just released a manual charger. I saw it at the store yesterday when I was there. It's about $50. I think I'm going to buy one and try it out and do a review video
On some smart chargers the "bad battery" light may be more of a tell-tale than something that cuts power. I figured that much because the aligator clip on a Duralast charger was still sparking. If it wasn't trying to push any current, it wouldn't be doing that. I figure they may still switch to a different mode however (even lower charge rate?), to play it a bit more safe. So if it sparks with a bad battery indicator, it's still doing something.
also if the battery charger says bad battery then you can also use the boost option on the charger for 30 or so min and then put it back on the charge option
Thank you for explaining something that has confused me for years. Always got it running, was never sure how. I have a trickle charger. I am guessing the 2 volt trickle aspect of this charger is disconnected from the " smart". Throw a trickle at it for a couple minutes and presto, it works. Turn it up and away we go.
I originally thought I found a magic hook up point after fooling around for hours. Then my magic wouldn't work one day. I am too stupid for this smart crap.
@@Thea-gj2or I liked the chargers a lot better when they were a simple transformer and rectifier. They'd throw voltage into a rock if you wanted them to. These new chargers are horrible.
@@TheWeekendAngler I was ready to smash things so many times. I learned at a young age that smashing things just gets you smashed things. We don't drive the car often enough or far enough to keep the battery charged. It gets worse in our - 20 degree winter lows. Lasts a month at best, then the struggle begins. I think I have it under control now. I might actually understand the problem thanks too you. Thanks again for the explanation and the swift reply. Dave
To clarify, the day it didn't work was yesterday. By trickle charging it for 3 minutes I got it to charge at 10 v. Now the charge rate is dropping fast. At 7.5 v and dropping. Started the car an hour ago but wanted a better charge for the wife to leave the house. I am convinced it will read full charge very soon. Thanks for helping me understand why, hopefully. I only say hopefully because I thought I understood it before. Good times on you and yours.
Going to give this a try, I've got a 6/12 volt smart charger. It will charge a dead battery at 1 or 2v but only to 6v. It must have to read higher for it to realize its a dead 12v.
Used my Harbor Freight jump pack to fool my old Die Hard charger to run in manual mode. Then, I got enough voltage on the battery that I could get my new Vector battery charger to do the rest.
A way with less effort is to get an old 12v wall wart power supply, and a splitter ( one male, 3 female outlets) for the cord, clamp the charger leads on the battery, then the wall wart leads to those clamps and turn on the charger. The charger will sense voltage, so will start to charge. Once it starts charging you can disconnect the wall wart power supply and the charger will run until the battery is fully charged.
The smart thing about smart chargers is that when the battery is charged, they will switch to float, maintenance or storage mode and not boil out your battery. The dumb thing about dumb chargers is that they are like the Energizer bunny, they just keep going and going. So you have to watch them. They are useful for some purposes. You could use a dumb charger to put a "surface charge" on your dead battery in a few minutes that will allow your smart charger to engage. You can also use a dumb charger to desulfate a battery if it's not too far gone if you do some research and understand what voltage and amperage levels to watch for. Good video.
I wasnt aware that smart chargers had a minimum voltage requirement for charging ! Hmm... Lets see what we can do about that now after having watched this very instructional video :)
It seems to me smart batteries are designed for premature discard by owners, so that rebuilds are more lucrative. They do what you did, and turn the sale around again because basically, there's nothing wrong with the battery bad enough for discard. Batteries are sold twice: once new, then USED LIKE NEW with little comparative markdown. Old chargers meant a dead battery that could not be charged was also likely to be a brick for the reseller. Seems like it, doesn't it?
Great vid, thanks. Would you recommend doing this with a completely drained battery too? It's not detected by my charger - which min. limit is 2.5v - so I guess it's somewhere between completely drained and >2.5v. Cheers
Hey, thanks so much for your awesome hack. Silly question, but do the batteries need to be the same kind? My dead battery is a calcium and my deep cycle is AGM?
I put charger to dead battery. then cables from helper battery onto charger clamps. Once charger fooled I can take jumpers and good battery away. Good battery could also be another good car to fool charger. I did have a modern charger with an overide button. It was great until I backed over it. Shit happens. Sometimes I use old charger to fool new charger then disconnect. like using new chargers when I wont be around to disconnect. thx for video as it will have helped many out there. Canada
Instead of hooking the Dewalt to the john boat battery connect it to the dead battery. Then just piggy back the other leads temporarily onto the dead battery. Then when charging starts you can remove the john boat battery and your Dewalt is already in the right place.
I've done this many times and it does work by tricking the voltage however I will advise you that one time I did this on a 12v battery that was at 5.5 v and few hours later the battery took off in my yard good thing I have big yard and charged it away from my house or garage 🙃..The cause was my charger was damaged somehow from doing this method I thought the inline fuse would or internal components would've just burned out and stop charging I was using a Ctek charger.
my battery is now 4 yrs old.. if it's my car does not start, all i just do is to connect wires in parallel to another car then start, for the alternator to charge my dead battery.. after a while, my car can start and i leave it 10mins to charge up itself.. then good to go 😁
That would work. I'd probably connect the running jump vehicle to the dead one and allow about 5 minutes. The running vehicle's alternator will likely put a surface charge on the dead battery which will be enough to trick the charger into coming on and finishing the job.
Even a small 9 volt transistor radio battery will make a smart charger begin charging. Once the charger turns on it will continue charging after the small battery is removed.
9v is usually the accepted threshold voltage for charging, however a lot of the cheaper smart chargers require a little more. I've got one that won't charge anything under 11v.
You can jump the dead battery for about five minutes and get a “surface charge” on the dead one then your charger will recognize it and begin charging.
Some "smart" chargers do have an override function but most don't. It's ridiculous! It ranks up there with the new gas cans! I learned about this charger problem when I picked up a smart charger at a thrift store with no owners manual...it didn't charge my battery and when I looked into it I learned what was going on. You can actually just temporarily attatch a 9-12-14.4 volt small battery just long enough to fool the charger and then remove the small battery and that usually works. A 9volt alkaline battery can work sometimes or a drill battery or whatever just get the polarity right! And remove it after the trickery! And again some chargers have a way of overriding the detectable voltage feature for a short time like 5 minutes? Read the manual! Or keep or buy old school chargers!
This is also an issue with the 18650 and likely many lithium ion batteries. Some of my chargers will get past the low voltage, won't charge issue, but most would not. The remedy is the old type transistor radio 9v or probably any 9v. Use it the same way as explained here, and your off to the races. As mentioned in my prior post, unless someone can prove otherwise, something is VERY fishy with today's chargers.
Yep. Make a charger that won't charge and you can sell people new batteries. Plus, since the analyzers at the stores will show it good, since it is, they don't have to warranty it. I wonder how many folks have bought batteries they didn't need.
I like dewalt tools, but this is one of those cases where some fly-by-night company paid a little money in exchange for being allowed to put the dewalt name on their charger. I have seen a few chargers that do have a manual mode, but not very many.
I'm not sure I understand your question, but I connected the red and black volt meter leads to the side posts on that battery. That is a dual post battery, with posts on the top and the side.
I have the DeWalt DXAEC80 dual bank charger. It's good too with a pretty good desulfate cycle. Charge, desulfate for a 24 hours, repeat charge and desulfate 3 times. It does require somewhere around 9-10V on the clamps before it will charge, maybe I'll open it up and feed a 12V thru a 2k resistor and a switch to the + clamp to bypass the "safety".
Yes i killed my 2 year old battery and my charger will not fully charge it, I knew about this trick but I forgot it can't wait to hook another battery to it a charge it up , thanks.
this is probably a dumb question; but is it possible for a dead battery to read fully charged and keep shutting of the smart charger? ......Thanks, Willie
Am i missing something, but if you have a fully charged battery and cables can't you just start the car and take it for a half hour drive and then charge it...
@@TheWeekendAngler ahahahaha I think he meant charge a loose car battery with a running car using jumper cables. I’m wondering your opinion as well for deep cycle batteries.
@@TheWeekendAngler sorry I meant just forget the battery charger and use the car’s alternator. Like jump starting a car but no car. I’m a bit nervous to try it but Ive been in a tight spot sometimes where this would have saved the day. Didn’t have jumper cables with or I would have just tried it.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. You gotta have access to another battery or another car, to make a battery charger work. That's not very "smart" if you ask me. However what is definitely "smart" is that many of these "smart chargers" are sold with trademark names such as Diehard. What is Diehard famous for selling? Right. New car batteries. Techs can use these smart chargers to force a customer into buying a new battery even if their battery could have been saved. "Sir, the charger wont even detect that your battery is hooked up to it. You need a new battery." Despite the battery being new enough to be resurrected. (but what shop wants to resurrect batteries as a favor when they could just sell new ones for profit?)
Better still, buy a smart charger that will bring up a dead battery to full, I bought one for this reason after my previous smart charger couldn’t do it. Now I have one that will pump in the amps like the old transformer type and then float it afterwards. The smaller units aren’t worth it.
The problem now u are charging 2 batteries, not one time and energy wasted as well as now it may stop charging prematurely because of the good battery in circuit.😊
@@TheWeekendAngler it sounded ridiculous when my buddy told me but it worked within 30 seconds and my battery was dead dead. But it just has to register something with a few volts I guess even a small ass battery will work
What the heck is the point of this idiotic "feature" ? I mean it's so idiotic, many would consider such charges defective and should be returned. Enough returns would put a stop the issue. Call me paranoid but the only thing that comes to mind is the charger is designed to give the impression your old battery is ruined so you buy another. If anyone can come up with a better theory, I'd love to hear it.
That's why I still keep an old style manual charger around. Easy way to tell is quickly clap the leads together. If you see sparks, it'll throw voltage into anything you connect it to.
And people don’t think about this so you have a dead battery but you don’t have the money to purchase a battery charger but you need to leave in the morning to go to work, so do you have a old cell phone charger take a cut the end off strip it back you’ll see a red and a black wire Hook it to your battery plugged in overnight and your batteries charged it’s like a trickle charger used fast charging one, so what it takes all night but you didn’t have the money to purchase a charger and this is actually charging your battery the correct way the way it should be done. You don’t want to charge your battery fast you want to take it slow and bring it up And bring it up to fast it’ll never charge your battery to 100% people don’t think compromise things around the house it’s just laying there and I know people have thousands of cords and ends for the wall socket plug it into extension cord and there you go or go to Harbor freight spend $15 get your solar panel so when the vehicles off The batteries being charged during the day that takes a strain off the alternator system because the battery is fully charged a lot of people don’t think and you run it directly to the battery and leave it hooked up all the time so when you’re going down the road is being charged your alternator shuts down because the computer sees the battery is fully charged Savon gas saver on the wear and tear your alternator and battery I think people forgot how to think.
If you have jumper cables, just ask for a hand and if someone pop their hood and jump your battery so the alternator can charge your battery. If that's not an option call roadside assistance especially in colder weather. The issue here is he purchased a 12 volt 3 stage charger but needs a 4 stage charger to get the battery back to 12 volt range. It's a solution however that entire setup is unnecessary and costly. What happens when the backup battery discharges down to 11 volts. You'll spend half a day charging batteries. 1200 watts at 30a bulk stage 3 hours per battery.
I'm going to keep spreading this. A 9 volt battery jumped to the dead battery while attempting to charge worked for me.
It's ridiculous that a battery charger won't charge a completely dead battery. That's the idea of a battery charger to charge a dead battery.
I could not agree more my friend
Nothing last forever my friend. The average life span of a battery is 3 to 5 years. Once the the battery expires its time for a new one and it won't hold a charge
@@jeromemeyers4167 I'm merely talking about a new or recent battery that has gone completely dead and the battery charger won't charge it. It doesn't have to be a bad battery it could be a a battery that's just completely drained. Older manual battery chargers would charge a completely drained battery.
"Smart"? More like dumb battery chrager
I had this problem last year. took the battery into my warm house ..... hooked it up to my battery booster pack 3 times for 20 secs at a time .... throws enough energy to trick the "smart" charger to begin its cycle.
If you have a booster and are out and about and you find your battery is dead flat ... of course hooking the booster up will not start your car. You must first disconnect the battery cables, then, hook the booster cables up only to the disconnected cables ..... bi passes the dead battery, starts every time.
Thanks for this video. Worked like a charm. Tried to charge it with a "smart" charger for two days with no luck. This had the battery charging in no time.
the battery in my Corvette was dead and my battery tender wouldnt recognize the battery, this worked and helped a ton! thanks!!!
After trying to charge a 3 ,1/2 year old battery ( with a warranty of 3 years) , I tried for 2 days...nothing . Just about to spend $95 on a new one, and found this video. The battery is now fully charged, brilliant fix thanks
I once put enough charge in a dead 12V car battery using a 9V PP3 battery, it added just enough power to get the smart charger to turn on. I read it somewhere, tried it and it worked.
Thanks for the video! My B&D "smart" charger had never failed me, but it just kept clicking off when I attempted to charge my Chevy Silverado dead battery which had been setting idle for over three weeks! I followed your video using a "ghost" battery removed from my private aircraft and it worked like a charm! (I first tried a 9V radio battery, but couldn't get that to work.) Thanks for the "tip" and the very clear and easy procedures for the fix!
I'm glad to hear it worked out for you! We've got to help each other with all these "smart" chargers these days.
Thank you for this video. I followed your instructions and it went from refusing to charge to fully charged. Thank you!
That's great! I'm glad this video helped you out! Thanks for watching!
I do something similar. I 'briefly' touch jumpers from good battery to totally bad battery. 1 second or less in case dead battery has short, etc...Then I disconnect and just attach charger to dead battery. More times than not, the quick connection above will bring the voltage high enough on your battery to get the charger going.
Great video, thanks for posting! I had two RV batteries hooked up in parallel on my camper. I forgot to disconnect the leads when I put it in storage. Therefore with the parasitic drain from the camper, it drained my 2 batteries down to 1 volt. I thought, no problem. I'll hook up my smart charger. The batteries wouldn't take a charge. I got my 2000 watt portable generator out and it has a 12v connection to hook up to your battery. I hooked it up and ran the generator for about 10 minutes or so. That was just good enough for my smart charger to detect a enough voltage to start charging. I was thankful, being those 2 batteries were only a year old. These smart chargers are a PIA!
😊
Good Lord! My intelligent chargers will try down to 9 volts.
I have used alarm panel batteries to trick the charger to just get it started charging for mowers and such.
Very helpful video! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much! I just tried to charge my motorcycle battery with my smart charger and it would not change. Used your trick and I am up and running! Thanks...
So glad I came across your video, my son's motorbike battery had 0.5v in it which meant my Optimate 2 would not start charging. Wired the bike battery up to a car battery then clipped the charger to the car battery and after 3hrs had 6v in the bike battery and now it's on charge direct with the charger 👍🏻
Can be done with two intelligent chargers PROVIDING that at least one has the option to do an engine start. Hit the battery with the engine start then hit it with the ‘intellijunk’ charger. I tell you one thing. Even if it takes a knife fight i am never walking past a 1980s schumacher battery charger at a garage sale again!
Comment of the year right here! That is awesome! Thanks!
Y are those the cream of the crop ?
@@cr112784 they just don’t have this ‘smart technology’ and their construction is better.
I remember being a kid and seeing what my dad and others used as battery chargers: a box on wheels that let you choose 2amp, 10amp, and 50 amp settings. I've seen better ones with 100 amp ranges. When that thing came out, dead battery problems were solved, very quickly.
It blows my mind that we live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for products to decline in quality and capability.
Thanks from Australia. My battery is dead, and I couldn't remember the jump sequence. This works great
I’ve always had a spare car battery good solid crank on timber blocks on the ground and still using old school trickle charger to this day. I’ve looked after it extremely well.
Hook up fully charged high crank battery to any dead battery in a car or motorcycle or anything and bang kicks it in the guts.
Anyway thanks for the advice
I HATE the microprocessor controlled chargers! I actually threw out a good battery because my new Stanley charger stopped charging after a few seconds and went to a zero-effective, never ending "Reconditioning Battery" state. I let the NEW battery on my seldom used farm truck run down again and yep, the Stanley said "NO." After watching your video I realized that if I supplied enough voltage, the charger would sense the battery and charge it. I used the Engine Start feature on the Stanley. It supplies a heavier charge for 60 seconds. After about 10 consecutive Engine Start cycles, my battery had enough voltage to be sensed, and it charged perfectly Thanks for the "lead!"
This is excellent help. I have a battery in my Subaru which is reading about 11.7 volts and which is not enough to turn the engine over. The problem is that I have bought a new Ring smart charger to replace my old broken non smart charger and the new charger is not recognising the battery-even at 11.7!. I had thought today that the new charger was faulty but in order to prove/disprove that, I shall follow your steps in this video to see whether it's the new charger at fault or whether the battery is simply not at a voltage which the charger will recognise. Thank you.
This worked perfectly. Thank you for the helpful idea
You should run the positive charger lead to the dead battery and the negative to the good battery so that you are not decreasing the life of the good battery. Still fools a smart charger but does so in a better more efficient manner.
That's a good idea too
I'll be doing this in the morning, so after doing that do you attach one jumper cable to the posts left on both batteries to complete the circuit?
Thank you for this video…I have a Promaster Van…😢Simple question….When you connected smart charger to good battery…how did you have room on the battery posts to connect both jumper and charger clamps? Please don’t laugh at me…this is my first attempt at being a car mechanic….These batteries are very expensive so I have to try!😊 Thank you for your help!
I may try this method, as the charger I bought won't charge since my mother's battery is 0.2v currently. Thank you for the tips
Wow! This worked amazingly well!!
Thank you!
Brilliant lesson & thank you my friend! To me it looks like the manufactures of batteries And chargers are in cahoots & simply taking the piss out of the pubic and just trying to screw us for every single coin we have in our already empty pockets!
So you have to have a good battery to charge a dead battery with a smart charger. What good are they ? So if I’m sitting at home with a dead battery and no other batteries around I still can’t charge my dead battery. I guess that’s the new American way. Good information Josh.
Yeah, these new battery chargers are garbage. I have one old style left that will throw voltage into whatever I connect it to.
I absolutely hate the new style chargers, but it's all you can find these days. It took me a bit to figure out this workaround so I thought I'd share for anyone else in the same boat.
I've seen the threshold voltage on these chargers as high as 12v. If I have 12v on a battery, it really doesn't need charged.
Thanks! I just bought a viking "smart" charger but my battery is below the threshold (10v). I also have a travel viking battery jumper. I'll use them together. So ridiculous lol 😅
I bought an old style battery charger today.
The receipt was still in the box. It was bought in 1979.
It's now charging my totally dead battery.
I got my hands on an older manual charger this week also. I opened it up tonight to go through it and check it out, but so far all is looking well with it.
@@TheWeekendAngler I've now charged two totally dead batteries with it.
The best £5 I've ever spent.
Anyone else looking for a manual charger, I haven't found any. The best option I found is harbor freight's analog style charger. It requires 7V on the leads but you can google the hack that puts a switch between 2 solder joints so you can bypass the 7v safety mechanism.
@@thebluelunarmonkey I got mine from Facebook Marketplace.
@@thebluelunarmonkey Harbor Freight just released a manual charger. I saw it at the store yesterday when I was there. It's about $50. I think I'm going to buy one and try it out and do a review video
On some smart chargers the "bad battery" light may be more of a tell-tale than something that cuts power. I figured that much because the aligator clip on a Duralast charger was still sparking. If it wasn't trying to push any current, it wouldn't be doing that. I figure they may still switch to a different mode however (even lower charge rate?), to play it a bit more safe.
So if it sparks with a bad battery indicator, it's still doing something.
Good video, it was informative. Merry Christmas!
Just done this. Great advice. Thanks for sharing. Some idiot left his key in the ignition switched on. Doh! 😎
also if the battery charger says bad battery then you can also use the boost option on the charger for 30 or so min and then put it back on the charge option
That's a good feature that some of the better smart chargers have.
Thanks for your podcast will try it out in a few minutes
Thanks for this great tip, Josh. It works,Lester
Thank you for explaining something that has confused me for years. Always got it running, was never sure how. I have a trickle charger. I am guessing the 2 volt trickle aspect of this charger is disconnected from the " smart". Throw a trickle at it for a couple minutes and presto, it works. Turn it up and away we go.
I originally thought I found a magic hook up point after fooling around for hours. Then my magic wouldn't work one day. I am too stupid for this smart crap.
@@Thea-gj2or I liked the chargers a lot better when they were a simple transformer and rectifier. They'd throw voltage into a rock if you wanted them to. These new chargers are horrible.
@@TheWeekendAngler I was ready to smash things so many times. I learned at a young age that smashing things just gets you smashed things. We don't drive the car often enough or far enough to keep the battery charged. It gets worse in our - 20 degree winter lows. Lasts a month at best, then the struggle begins. I think I have it under control now. I might actually understand the problem thanks too you. Thanks again for the explanation and the swift reply. Dave
To clarify, the day it didn't work was yesterday. By trickle charging it for 3 minutes I got it to charge at 10 v. Now the charge rate is dropping fast. At 7.5 v and dropping. Started the car an hour ago but wanted a better charge for the wife to leave the house. I am convinced it will read full charge very soon. Thanks for helping me understand why, hopefully. I only say hopefully because I thought I understood it before. Good times on you and yours.
Going to give this a try, I've got a 6/12 volt smart charger. It will charge a dead battery at 1 or 2v but only to 6v. It must have to read higher for it to realize its a dead 12v.
Used my Harbor Freight jump pack to fool my old Die Hard charger to run in manual mode. Then, I got enough voltage on the battery that I could get my new Vector battery charger to do the rest.
A way with less effort is to get an old 12v wall wart power supply, and a splitter ( one male, 3 female outlets) for the cord, clamp the charger leads on the battery, then the wall wart leads to those clamps and turn on the charger. The charger will sense voltage, so will start to charge. Once it starts charging you can disconnect the wall wart power supply and the charger will run until the battery is fully charged.
I've done that one before also. Good tip!
I’ve did like 3 cycles of start and then swap over to charge quickly and it normally works
The smart thing about smart chargers is that when the battery is charged, they will switch to float, maintenance or storage mode and not boil out your battery. The dumb thing about dumb chargers is that they are like the Energizer bunny, they just keep going and going. So you have to watch them. They are useful for some purposes. You could use a dumb charger to put a "surface charge" on your dead battery in a few minutes that will allow your smart charger to engage. You can also use a dumb charger to desulfate a battery if it's not too far gone if you do some research and understand what voltage and amperage levels to watch for. Good video.
I wasnt aware that smart chargers had a minimum voltage requirement for charging ! Hmm... Lets see what we can do about that now after having watched this very instructional video :)
It seems to me smart batteries are designed for premature discard by owners, so that rebuilds are more lucrative. They do what you did, and turn the sale around again because basically, there's nothing wrong with the battery bad enough for discard. Batteries are sold twice: once new, then USED LIKE NEW with little comparative markdown. Old chargers meant a dead battery that could not be charged was also likely to be a brick for the reseller.
Seems like it, doesn't it?
Great vid, thanks.
Would you recommend doing this with a completely drained battery too?
It's not detected by my charger - which min. limit is 2.5v - so I guess it's somewhere between completely drained and >2.5v.
Cheers
Yep. I've done this on that old suburban after letting it sit for a long time. Battery voltage was basically nil and it brought it back from the dead.
Thanks for tip. Exactly what I was looking for.
Groovy video.
Hey, thanks so much for your awesome hack. Silly question, but do the batteries need to be the same kind? My dead battery is a calcium and my deep cycle is AGM?
Will this work if you're using a smaller 6v/12v everstart battery charger?
It should.
Can you leave the charger piggy backed like this until it's charged?
I put charger to dead battery. then cables from helper battery onto charger clamps. Once charger fooled I can take jumpers and good battery away. Good battery could also be another good car to fool charger. I did have a modern charger with an overide button. It was great until I backed over it. Shit happens. Sometimes I use old charger to fool new charger then disconnect.
like using new chargers when I wont be around to disconnect. thx for video as it will have helped many out there. Canada
Will it start right now?As you are charging it with your fifty amps on
Instead of hooking the Dewalt to the john boat battery connect it to the dead battery. Then just piggy back the other leads temporarily onto the dead battery. Then when charging starts you can remove the john boat battery and your Dewalt is already in the right place.
Thanks for the trick
I've done this many times and it does work by tricking the voltage however I will advise you that one time I did this on a 12v battery that was at 5.5 v and few hours later the battery took off in my yard good thing I have big yard and charged it away from my house or garage 🙃..The cause was my charger was damaged somehow from doing this method I thought the inline fuse would or internal components would've just burned out and stop charging I was using a Ctek charger.
my battery is now 4 yrs old.. if it's my car does not start, all i just do is to connect wires in parallel to another car then start, for the alternator to charge my dead battery.. after a while, my car can start and i leave it 10mins to charge up itself.. then good to go 😁
Thank you, just what i needed!
Smart charger, you mean smart ass charger.
BAM!! Thank you very much, sir.
I'll try it. Have a big farmer battery that is dead, brand new never used it. Want to sell it, gotta charge it up first.
Do u need to take out the good battery out of your car or can you just leave it in the car connected
You can leave it in the car connected.
Would it make sense to try this from one vehicle to another rather than jumpstarting?
That would work. I'd probably connect the running jump vehicle to the dead one and allow about 5 minutes. The running vehicle's alternator will likely put a surface charge on the dead battery which will be enough to trick the charger into coming on and finishing the job.
Even a small 9 volt transistor radio battery will make a smart charger begin charging. Once the charger turns on it will continue charging after the small battery is removed.
9v is usually the accepted threshold voltage for charging, however a lot of the cheaper smart chargers require a little more.
I've got one that won't charge anything under 11v.
Fing genius!
could you use a jumper instead of another battery to make think the charger its 12 V?
No. You have to have a 12v source for the "smart" charger to turn on.
You can jump the dead battery for about five minutes and get a “surface charge” on the dead one then your charger will recognize it and begin charging.
Some "smart" chargers do have an override function but most don't.
It's ridiculous!
It ranks up there with the new gas cans!
I learned about this charger problem when I picked up a smart charger at a thrift store with no owners manual...it didn't charge my battery and when I looked into it I learned what was going on.
You can actually just temporarily attatch a 9-12-14.4 volt small battery just long enough to fool the charger and then remove the small battery and that usually works.
A 9volt alkaline battery can work sometimes or a drill battery or whatever just get the polarity right!
And remove it after the trickery!
And again some chargers have a way of overriding the detectable voltage feature for a short time like 5 minutes?
Read the manual!
Or keep or buy old school chargers!
Worked like a charm thanks
Thank you.
Will it work if there is no charge left in the battery. You had 11 volts in the suburban
I've used this method before with batteries reading under 1 volt.
I still keep a dumb battery charger around just to get the initial charge on the battery.... same idea.
Then use the smart charger to finish it off.
I buy dumb chargers almost every time I see them for sale at yard sales or auctions.
This is fucking genius
Let me know when you make a video to how to remove the smart
Isn't it dangerous to leave that setup on very long as it will over charge the good battery??
You're fine to do it for the time it will take to get the depleted battery over the smart charger threshold. It won't overcharge.
This is also an issue with the 18650 and likely many lithium ion batteries. Some of my chargers will get past the low voltage, won't charge issue, but most would not. The remedy is the old type transistor radio 9v or probably any 9v. Use it the same way as explained here, and your off to the races. As mentioned in my prior post, unless someone can prove otherwise, something is VERY fishy with today's chargers.
Yep. Make a charger that won't charge and you can sell people new batteries. Plus, since the analyzers at the stores will show it good, since it is, they don't have to warranty it. I wonder how many folks have bought batteries they didn't need.
so what's the point of having a battery charger if you need to keep a fully charged battery around?
You didn't used to have to until they started making these "smart" chargers that are dumber than a brick.
Just buy a NOCO Genius brand charger. It has a “force” mode that will manually charge batteries under 1V.
I run noco genius onboard chargers on both of my boats. I did this video for people stuck with the "smart" chargers.
Why don't these chargers have a bypass button? In the meantime, avoid DeWalt.
I like dewalt tools, but this is one of those cases where some fly-by-night company paid a little money in exchange for being allowed to put the dewalt name on their charger.
I have seen a few chargers that do have a manual mode, but not very many.
How you do the voltage almost at end of this video when had the red and black in oil that to volt meter
I'm not sure I understand your question, but I connected the red and black volt meter leads to the side posts on that battery. That is a dual post battery, with posts on the top and the side.
How are those Dewalt chargers? I didn’t know Dewalt sold those.
I wouldn't buy it a second time if I had the option.
I have the DeWalt DXAEC80 dual bank charger. It's good too with a pretty good desulfate cycle. Charge, desulfate for a 24 hours, repeat charge and desulfate 3 times. It does require somewhere around 9-10V on the clamps before it will charge, maybe I'll open it up and feed a 12V thru a 2k resistor and a switch to the + clamp to bypass the "safety".
It only helps if you have another good battery
so a "smart" trickle charger won't charge a dead battery? What exactly did the makers of these "smart" devices think they were built to do?
They expected people to rush out and buy their "Fancy" chargers that are much cheaper to produce since they don't require large, heavy transformers.
Good trick.
Yes i killed my 2 year old battery and my charger will not fully charge it, I knew about this trick but I forgot it can't wait to hook another battery to it a charge it up , thanks.
this is probably a dumb question; but is it possible for a dead battery to read fully charged and keep shutting of the smart charger? ......Thanks, Willie
It is. But that's usually an indication of a defective battery. I'd suggest having that battery load tested to get an indication of its condition.
@@TheWeekendAngler thank you
had battery tested and the volts were good but no AMPS, resulting in a bad battery......
@@bonniejohnson1518 that's the downfall of flooded lead acid batteries. Once the plates sulfate, the battery is pretty much finished
Am i missing something, but if you have a fully charged battery and cables can't you just start the car and take it for a half hour drive and then charge it...
These chargers aren't 'smart': if they won't charge a completely dead battery, they're dumb as hell....
Trying to do this to a jump starter using another jump starter haha
@@SBdunks3 that's awesome! Let us know how it goes.
Can I charge a standing car battery using a battery on a moving car?
Hooking it up might require some acrobatics.
@@TheWeekendAngler ahahahaha I think he meant charge a loose car battery with a running car using jumper cables. I’m wondering your opinion as well for deep cycle batteries.
@@sacm.d.l8337 this technique will work for deep cycles as well.
@@TheWeekendAngler sorry I meant just forget the battery charger and use the car’s alternator. Like jump starting a car but no car. I’m a bit nervous to try it but Ive been in a tight spot sometimes where this would have saved the day. Didn’t have jumper cables with or I would have just tried it.
@@sacm.d.l8337 you can use the alternator output of a running car to charge a separate battery, yes.
A charger refuses to charge an 11.5 volt battery then, seriously, wtf good is it???
Smart chargers are the dumbest thing ever invented. If the battery voltage was up enough for the charger to detect it it wouldn't need to be charged.
You're absolutely right!
It’s because of you have a bad cell you’re not creating an unsafe condition. Usually batteries below 10.8v are junk or need to be rejuvenated
Yeah, that's ridiculous.
You gotta have access to another battery or another car, to make a battery charger work.
That's not very "smart" if you ask me.
However what is definitely "smart" is that many of these "smart chargers" are sold with trademark names such as Diehard. What is Diehard famous for selling? Right. New car batteries.
Techs can use these smart chargers to force a customer into buying a new battery even if their battery could have been saved. "Sir, the charger wont even detect that your battery is hooked up to it. You need a new battery." Despite the battery being new enough to be resurrected. (but what shop wants to resurrect batteries as a favor when they could just sell new ones for profit?)
Better still, buy a smart charger that will bring up a dead battery to full, I bought one for this reason after my previous smart charger couldn’t do it. Now I have one that will pump in the amps like the old transformer type and then float it afterwards. The smaller units aren’t worth it.
smart chargers apparently only charge fully charged batteries
Pretty much. I think the person who coined the term "smart" on these chargers was anything but. 😂
The problem now u are charging 2 batteries, not one time and energy wasted as well as now it may stop charging prematurely because of the good battery in circuit.😊
These "smart chargers" are some of the dumbest pieces of equipment ever to happen too the auto industry
Just used a 9v battery to do the same thing
I'm going to have to try that. That's an awesome hack! Someone else mentioned that a few days ago too. Thank you for sharing!
@@TheWeekendAngler it sounded ridiculous when my buddy told me but it worked within 30 seconds and my battery was dead dead. But it just has to register something with a few volts I guess even a small ass battery will work
What the heck is the point of this idiotic "feature" ? I mean it's so idiotic, many would consider such charges defective and should be returned. Enough returns would put a stop the issue. Call me paranoid but the only thing that comes to mind is the charger is designed to give the impression your old battery is ruined so you buy another. If anyone can come up with a better theory, I'd love to hear it.
But if you have to do all that what's the purpose of the battery charger that's why we buy a battery charger to avoid all that
That's why I still keep an old style manual charger around. Easy way to tell is quickly clap the leads together. If you see sparks, it'll throw voltage into anything you connect it to.
Can you connect the charger cables to the dead battery instead in this arrangement?
It's worth a shot, but more often than not the charger will read the dead battery and refuse to engage.
And people don’t think about this so you have a dead battery but you don’t have the money to purchase a battery charger but you need to leave in the morning to go to work, so do you have a old cell phone charger take a cut the end off strip it back you’ll see a red and a black wire Hook it to your battery plugged in overnight and your batteries charged it’s like a trickle charger used fast charging one, so what it takes all night but you didn’t have the money to purchase a charger and this is actually charging your battery the correct way the way it should be done. You don’t want to charge your battery fast you want to take it slow and bring it up And bring it up to fast it’ll never charge your battery to 100% people don’t think compromise things around the house it’s just laying there and I know people have thousands of cords and ends for the wall socket plug it into extension cord and there you go or go to Harbor freight spend $15 get your solar panel so when the vehicles off The batteries being charged during the day that takes a strain off the alternator system because the battery is fully charged a lot of people don’t think and you run it directly to the battery and leave it hooked up all the time so when you’re going down the road is being charged your alternator shuts down because the computer sees the battery is fully charged Savon gas saver on the wear and tear your alternator and battery I think people forgot how to think.
So where can I find a dumb charger? I got 2 of these worthless smart chargers.
Facebook marketplace and garage sales is about the only place.
so you need a charged battery to charge a dead battery.. that is absurd.. we should be able to trick the undervoltage relay.. I will look for it..
Some chargers you can. I agree, it's a nuisance.
If you have jumper cables, just ask for a hand and if someone pop their hood and jump your battery so the alternator can charge your battery. If that's not an option call roadside assistance especially in colder weather. The issue here is he purchased a 12 volt 3 stage charger but needs a 4 stage charger to get the battery back to 12 volt range. It's a solution however that entire setup is unnecessary and costly. What happens when the backup battery discharges down to 11 volts. You'll spend half a day charging batteries. 1200 watts at 30a bulk stage 3 hours per battery.
Thls is an old method called "piggy backing".