What's "expensive"?

 

$60 for a car charger/ engine starter is not expensive....

 

i have had good luck with the Battery Tender Jr.

Bought 2 for fifty bucks from Pacific Battery a couple of years ago.

 

^wow now that is a really good deal

 

it was pretty sweet!

 

in comparison to other charger models out there that people have had success with, versus a harbor freight charger that people seem to be wary of (including you). hopefully the engine starter function wont ever be necessary. $30 is what i paid for my outdoor battery tender.

edit: fat fingers

 

instead of bitching about harbor freight, what you should be looking for is a charger that is certified to UL safety standards (CSA if it's for use in Canada).

look for the cULus mark or cCSAus mark on the product. that means the product was tested by a nationally recognized testing laboratory and meets US and Canadian safety standards. don't bother with CE marks. CE is self-declared conformity and most of the time is fake.

 

Interestingly those labs are mostly testing to consumer safety specs and not to the performance of the product to do what it claims. In this case the claim would be to keep the battery topped up w/o fuqing it up.
I'm sure there are plenty-o-products that qualify but I also know there are plenty that claim to be able but end up screwing up your battery.
Do yourself a favor and just get a Deltron Battery Tender product which does the job as proved/tested by at least several of us on this tread.

 

depends on the standard. most standards don't care about performance as long as safety isn't affected (the safest product is the one that doesn't work ). however, many newer standards are starting to incorporate performance and energy efficiency requirements.

care to explain how products screw up batteries? lead acid chargers are so simple that it's actually really hard to produce a product that will screw up a battery.

if you want to see a crappy battery charger, look at a typical charging system inside a car. the alternator's output is very dirty DC. you don't notice it because the battery is used to smooth out the voltage.

 

I use battery tender for my car and bike... works great! it's nice not worrying about the battery dieing over a long period of time. if you are planning to not drive the car for awhile, I recommend getting some sort of fuel stabilizer too... apparently on one of the fuel stabilizer instructions says that fuel can go bad as soon as 30 days