Flasher battery question

[Rivernut]

Does anyone know how long you leave those little chargers that come w/your flasher on the battery? I know it's x amount of hours for each hour you use it, or something like that. Mine is almost dead. thanks.

[Deitz Dittrich]

in a perfect world you would buy something to hook to the charger that would shut it down when the battery is charged so you dont hurt it. But rule of thumb as far as I know.. if you use the unit for 4 hours.. charge it for 2 hours. So, rule of Half!

But thats not the best way to do it.. There are a lot of different auto shut off dealies you can buy.

[Rivernut]

Thanks Deitz

[icehousebob]

My Vexilar charger has a small box on the wire with two tiny lights. The red one comes on when you hook it up and the green one comes on when its fully charged. If both lights come on, you have the hook-ups reversed or you have a shot battery. I'd never go back to the old chargers since I got this one.

[18 inch Crappie]

A standard 12v flasher battery is a 7amp hour battery, meaning a 1 amp draw will last you 7 hours. A flasher draws a lot less then that (vexilar says 275ma). Most chargers that come with your Vexilar or Marcum are 300ma-500ma at 12-14 volts to charge your battery. 500ma is .5 amp hours. So if your battery is 100% dead a 500ma charger will take 14 hours to charge. .5amps x 14 hours = 7 amp hours.

So if you use your flasher for 5 hours it should take about 5 hours to charge. 275ma draw and 300ma to charge are about equal.

[Rivernut]

This is the charger that came w/my clearwater classic. Time to come out of the stoneage and get a more modern charger. I still like the the clearwater, not a vexi, but it does the the job. Thanks again for the input guy's. Mike

[jigginjoe]

I had the same question then i realized that the charger that came with my camera has a light to show a full charge so i just use that for my marum flasher to.what i dont understand is I got a marcum camera so why does'nt marcum put the same charger they have for the camera with thier flasher would save alot of headache trying to figure out how long to charge.

[BIG DS]

Get the DCS from Marcum. It takes all the guess work out of it and they do not cost that much.

[Orlip]

Quote:

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My Vexilar charger has a small box on the wire with two tiny lights. The red one comes on when you hook it up and the green one comes on when its fully charged. If both lights come on, you have the hook-ups reversed or you have a shot battery. I'd never go back to the old chargers since I got this one.

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[hooksetta16]

There is a battery care/maintenance video on the vexilar HSOforum that is pretty helpful as well... I emailed them w/ a question before and they answered back pretty quick

[slipperybob]

Depends on the quality of the charging system, get 3 stage charger like the Marcum DCS 100 and you can recharge a depleted battery overnight, took me about ~16 hours. Get one of those cheap 500 milliamp charger on a depleted batter, took me almost 48 hours. Personally I wouldn't go more than 48 hours, and if you're forgetful (like me) getting something like a DCS charger won't fry your battery if you forget to unplug it.