Harbor Freight 4A High Frequency Charger/Maintainer

[In My Garage]

I bought two of these HF Viking battery charger/maintainers about a year apart when they were on sale. The charger has many great features...if only they would work.

According the the Owner's Manual (Ver 19g), on page 9 it states: "When the battery is fully charged, the battery symbol will fully display, and the backlight will turn green. The charger will then automatically enter maintenance mode".

I had the unit charging my battery and I monitored the display which was then GREEN indicating a fully charged battery, yet it was showing 12.3V. And where is the Maintenance Mode? Trust me, that is not a Maintenance Mode. It should be in low to mid 13V range...temperature dependent.

I spend over 5 years working with batteries and chargers evaluating them when I worked for the government. I know more than a bit about them. Attached pics are from my unit and a screen shot using my data logger.

Reading the HF reviews, it seems quite a few have noticed this. Both my used and new units have failed.

 

[Earp69]

Why not go with a deltran battery tender?

 

[In My Garage]

Why not go with a deltran battery tender?

Looking at their specs or should I day spec-less specs, I am not overly impressed with Battery Tender/Deltran either.

These low cost charger/maintainers are built to a price point in China and are nothing special. Mind you, better than not using a charger at all unless it is one that overcharges the battery or does not charge at all.

I have had the Viking apart and the internal constuction (circuit board. soldering, etc) is certainly far better than the CTEK chargers (I had an issue with the MODE button on the CTEK that is now scrapped and many have had the same issue as seen on YouTube).

Presently I own: 3 x Optimate 3, 1 x CTEK 3300, 2 x HF Viking 4A, 1 x YUASA Hot Shot, 1 x SOLAR Pro-Logix PL2320 and 2 manual chargers, the latter that never seem to go wrong...because they are simple.

Really, if you want a great charger, get a Xantrex TrueCharge 2 (I tested all functions of it some ten years ago in the lab) or maybe the SOLAR PL2320 Pro-Logix that I just bought earlier this year (recommended by my ex-workers in the lab). Of course, any fancy smancy charger with tons of electronics like microprocessors, etc can fail in time.