What battery charger do you all use?

My cheap little one has died after 3 years and was slow.

I like the idea of an engine start option as well.

Edit: Yes, Automotive. 12V and 6V options desirable.

I'd specify. You're looking for a 12v auotmotive battery charger. Of which I have no suggestions.

I know some good Lithium Ion 18650 chargers, though.

I have a Black and Decker one that I think I got at Wal Mart because it was a bit of an emergency. Had it for five years. Does what it's supposed to. For jump starting I've moved on to a lithium jump start pack because my cars always die far enough away that I need to find n+1 extension cords.

Battery tender jr. No jumpstart though which is sad. And highly inconvenient when I screw up.

IME, the "engine start assist" features are useless unless the charger also has a battery in it. I've never had a case where the engine wouldn't start on its own but would start with the "assist" enabled.

I use a Black&Decker branded "Vector" charger. It's a really nice, small, smart charger that does wet/gel/AGM batteries in 5/10/15 amp modes and includes a desulfation feature. It works really well, but alas I think they've discontinued that line of chargers.

I have an old Schumacher 8050 I got when I worked there in the early 90's, but I wouldn't recommend anything of theirs based solely on principle. They're all made overseas now too, so there's that. I also think they still own Exide, so scratch them from your list, and I think at least some of the Harbor Freight one's are Schumacher too.

Sorry to be such an unhelpful Debbie Downer...I guess if anything my recommendation would be to find an old(mid-90's or prior) Schumacher 8050 and never worry about it again?

When I've needed a charger, I've needed it for a car that won't start right now. This is the only charger that I've used that has both a jumpstart feature and a 25 amp 'fast charge' feature that charges a dead battery to 100% in about 20 min.

I have a Harbor Freight 2/10/50 amp charger for waking things up, and two Battery Tender Jrs at the moment, one on the bike, one on the disembodied battery for the Ranchero.

I have an old Schumacher. Probibly purchased it back in the 90s. It is a 10-25-125. Works great. I replaced the fuse in it once due to a friend borrowing it and hooking it up backwards. The 125 amp setting is good for starting things fast and I have used it to revive a couple completely dead battery's. No complaints at all about it.

In reply to dean1484:

Those were good units too.

I was assistant manager of the returns department at Schumacher for about 5-years in the early 90's. For the most part there were very few failures. Most of the chargers used button diodes soldered directly to a large heat sink, sometimes the solder joints failed. Very rarely the diodes failed. Even more rare was a transformer failure - they were all wound in-house, I'd be surprised if replacements exist. The "smart" chargers occasionally had PCB failures. The older ones were pretty damn simple, so there wasn't much to fail on them.

We'd get back pallets of presumably defective units from all the major vendors - Walmart, K-mart, Sears, etc. - except their employees weren't always too picky on what got returned. It was like Xmas every time we received a pallet, because there would usually be tools, car stereos, etc. mixed in with our battery chargers. Of course sometimes we received rocks or bricks in place of the transformers in the larger units, or inside an otherwise empty battery charger box. The ones that were in new condition would get cleaned up, re-boxed, and shipped back out. The ones needing repair would get a different colored face plate, a plain white box, and be sold to Big Lots as "refurbished".

I use Battery Tender products to maintain a charge on stored batteries and cannot say enough good things about them. DO NOT CHEAP out on float chargers, get a Battery Tender Jr.

For charging and reconditioning, I use this guy from B&D. I have not used the Engine Start feature yet because I use a jump-start battery (above, highly recommended) but for everything else I really like this guy.

Use a trickle charger when I'm not in a hurry. For everything else I have this. I really like the digital readout, it eliminates guesswork.

I actually have the same Schumacher above, which I think I bought from Lowes for something like $45. It has recovered multiple batteries from the ~3V range with no obvious ill effects, so I'm a believer.

Got an earlier version of this.

Been using it for about 6 or 7 years and it has worked great. This is the best price for one I've ever seen.

I must have gotten Shumachers that were built at beer-thirty on Friday then.

Had no luck with Snap-On chargers either.

Now I've got the C-Tek MUS4.3 charger / maintainers on the cars at work and the bikes at home. Never had a single problem with them and they've brought quite a few sulphated batteries back to life.

Can't recommend them highly enough.

I had an older version of this:

Harbor Freight $30 6/12v with float, fast charge, and start settings. It was terrible and eventually burnt up. It only sometimes float-charged, I never tried the fast charge option because it was mostly used on a yellow top, and the start setting never turned any car it was attached to over. In the market for a new one after I ash-canned this piece of junk.

I have an old 4 amp charger that must be near 40 yrs old and still works great. I prefer it over the larger 10 & 20 amp chargers as it has charged up batteries slow enough that others wise may have been damaged by the larger units with a faster charging rate.

In reply to pinchvalve:

I have that same Black & Decker. The start setting didn't seem to work too well for me, but otherwise it has been fine.

Trans_Maro wrote: I must have gotten Shumachers that were built at beer-thirty on Friday then. Had no luck with Snap-On chargers either. Now I've got the C-Tek MUS4.3 charger / maintainers on the cars at work and the bikes at home. Never had a single problem with them and they've brought quite a few sulphated batteries back to life. Can't recommend them highly enough.

CTEK is highly recommended. I was in a pinch and grabbed a battery tender branded one last year. The batteries I was working with either did not need a charge, or were too far gone. Should work well when it comes to tending.