Product Review: Schumacher Rapid Battery Charger/Maintainer

Buy this.

(via Amazon)

You're welcome.

See ya tomorrow.

Okay, I kid but seriously, if you drive at all or especially if you work from home and don't drive a lot, you should totally have this thing!  The Mr found this online while trying to find a way to keep my continuously dying battery charged.  Even with remote starting it every other day, it always seemed to be dead when I needed it most.  I'll admit, I kind of internally rolled my eyes thinking this was a waste of money and especially didn't like that we'd need to keep it plugged in and attached to the car for any period of time.  But his research showed that just starting it and driving it around the block was actually doing more harm than good so I relented and boy, am I glad I did!

You hook it up to your battery, and it will charge and desulfate your battery for optimum performance.  I can tell you it makes a massive difference in my car battery performance because even after remote starting and driving the car around the block, sometimes two days later it would choke or not start at all.  It was seriously frustrating because the battery was less than a year old and a good one at that.  Once the Mr put this on, it would charge, then desulfate the battery and give you a code to tell you if the battery is a-okay or not.  What is battery sulfation, you may ask?  According to the Google genie "The lead sulfate crystals are broken down (more or less successfully) in the charge cycle. Sometimes some crystals remain, or sometimes a battery is left partially discharged where the crystals of lead sulfate harden, and reduce the capacity of the battery to be charged. This is what desulfation (desulphation) is about, Charlie Brown."

We went for three weeks with a strong, solid turnover each time with the battery.  No hesitation, no choking, and no clicking because there isn't enough charge for the remote to do its job.  I never thought I'd be proud of a car and/or give virtual high fives for starting strong.  We put it on about every 3 weeks just to keep the battery fully charged.

On Easter Sunday, we had his crossover (less than a year old) loaded up and ready to go.  When he started it, it was in turnover mode for a good 3 seconds before finally starting.  No bueno.  This worried me because at this point we were less than a week out from driving cross country to Yellowstone and it did not instill confidence.  The next morning, he apparently had another long start and didn't tell me until later that night to which I told him to buy a new battery because I'm not getting stuck on a plain in the middle of nowhere with no options.  I told him to hook this up just to make sure the car was able to start to get him over to the car parts store so he put it on in the garage before bed.  It initially read 8.3 volts and batteries are 12v so yeah, already glad he bought the battery online.

(via Amazon)

Well, the next morning, it was still desulfating which it started before we went to bed and that is definitely not good.  Finally, before he went to change out the battery, the code for bad battery came up, reinforcing once again that driving to Yellowstone on that battery would've been a huge mistake.  That is the thing with Hyundai's that has consistently been our experience is that their new car batteries are lucky to last a year.  That means I was not entirely surprised by this but someone was really watching out for us given the timing.  Four days before the trip and we were sporting a new battery and will use this every few weeks to keep the battery health on both cars in tip-top shape.

The final selling point that would have me buy this over and over?  When we came back from Yellowstone after 3 weeks of it not being started or run, I opened the front door, I grabbed my remote and told the Mr "if that machine wants to impress me, this will be the test."  I hit my remote start and that sucker turned over like a champ, yo!!  I couldn't friggin' believe it and I don't think he could either!  So yeah, from someone whose car can go 2 days without being started and have to be jumped to going three weeks with a few hours hooked up on this, we are big-time impressed!

I would recommend this to everyone to keep their batteries up and running for as long as possible.  It paid for itself for us with one use!

====================
Like this post? Don't miss another one...subscribe via email or RSS feed. (Or you can follow me on Facebook )  Some posts may contain affiliate links which help keep this blog running at no cost to you.  See the Disclaimer page for more info.