It happened yet again. A guy went to jump start his motorcycle with a car charger, and it must have had one of the auto boost modes, and poof, there goes all the lights and electronics in the bike. You would be amazed at the amount of damage that was in the radio I just finished working on. That's two this week.
You can use these chargers for their low current modes for quick charging if you monitor them and take them off in a short period of time, but that's it.
Here is what happens:
High current chargers are not voltage regulated. Regulating that much current is prohibitively expensive. Instead, what the designer does is roughly estimates about how much current the dead battery can absorb, then switches in a much higher voltage, sometimes as high as 25-30 volts. (no load voltage) The vehicle never actually sees that much voltage because the high current going to the battery saturates the circuitry and pulls the voltage down to a manageable level.
The problem with using a motorcycle battery for this is that a bike battery can't absorb current at a rate as high as a car battery. When that happens, the higher input voltage does not sag like the designer intended it to. The result is blown capacitors, corrosive electrolyte from the capacitors all over the place, rusting the electronics, and if you are unlucky, you blow out semiconductors everywhere.
Even inexpensive chargers have automatic boost modes now. Do not ever attempt to start a bike with one, or you could very easily end up with thousands of dollars in damage to your bike's electronics.
Just a friendly warning.
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