Jump Starter Recommendations

[andrewwynn]

Originally Posted by jsoto

Call me old skewel. I would not want the lith. charge packs sitting in any of my vehicles unattended.

For fear that a garden gnome will break in and charge it without you being there.

Risk of failure with lithium rests in two failure modes:
1) over charging (just ask Samsung who in effort to cheat the system and claim more minutes per charge decided they should charge their note 7 batteries to 4.3 vs the world standard of 4.2v for lithium ion batteries). Turns out about 1 in 10,000 will shoot flames out at 4.3v. About 1 in 20,000,000 will shoot flames out at 4.2 hence the rare but happens random phone self destructs.
2) short circuit. For a part to come loose and short circuit when not even being shaken from driving is Powerball small odds! A short on the circuit board would most likely self destruct the trace before it could ever cause a fire.

So there really is no risk of a problem to store a LioN battery in a car, the only real world risk is the 1:20000000 risk of failure while charging. Do that while you are driving or in the house so you could deal with the flames should it happen.

I'm sticking with today's tech for the fact it will fit in a coat pocket. Mine let me down once when the fancy jumper cord Electronics failed and wouldn't close the safety switch I had to borrow my brother's basic model with the basic "diode" protection in the cord. $12-15 for a new cord/clamps for me and I'm back in business. I recommend the two linked above. The cheaper one is more reliable no circuitry to fail in the cord.



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[80stech]

You guys should watch the lithium battery documentary on NetFlix.

I'm sticking with today's tech for the fact it will fit in a coat pocket. Mine let me down once when the fancy jumper cord Electronics failed and wouldn't close the safety switch I had to borrow my brother's basic model with the basic "diode" protection in the cord. $12-15 for a new cord/clamps for me and I'm back in business. I recommend the two linked above. The cheaper one is more reliable no circuitry to fail in the cord.

Are you using 1200 amp diodes or did you cheap out and get 500 amp ones? The smaller ones might have less voltage drop!

[SigBoi]

https://www.amazon.com/NOCO-GB150-Ul.../dp/B015TKSSB8

Hands down the GB150 4000A. I bought 2 for my small dealership, 1st one is 3yrs old with hundreds if not a thousand starts on it, 2nd I bought to keep with me in the car. 1st one still jumps anything today. Will jump F250 V10, V8 diesel, you name it. We had a Benz S430 trade-in that had no battery (as in nothing there),we just clamped the leads to the batt connectors and it started it first try and kept it running for as long as we needed it to.

Jumped 10 cars in a row one cold winter day, and it was still between 50-75%. At $300 its pricey, but not more than what not having it when you need it will cost you in a service call. Even at 50% it'll jump a V8 no problem, which is why I have mine at just over 75% in the car, so even with it sitting there for weeks I know it'll still have enough power to jump my 4.8. Whereas a less powerful model sitting might not have enough to jump after losing charge over time.

Having said that, don't buy the lower NOCO models, we tried the lower amp ones and they don't do well except for the GB70 2000A

[80stech]

That sounds about right, I think if you price out non-fake lithium batteries anything less about $300 would be questionable.