Electronics » Battery charger warning

My nice YUASA motorcycle battery charger suddenly shorted out last week while charging the battery in my Triumph and blew the fuse on its pigtail. (Now I can appreciate a fused charging cable. Who knows what might have happened if the fuse wasn't in the circuit? ) I had bought the charger about 8 years ago and it failed without warning. So for those of you that use an external battery charger and a pigtail hooked up directly to your battery, make sure that the pigtail is fused (as most are), or some day you might start an electrical fire or at least end up with some melted wires.

I have an Optimate 4, I would like to think it was clever than the Yuasa one

Ged

Thanks for your post Richard.
A year or two back I changed from Battery Tenders to Optimate 4s.
I'm using one of the old Battery Tenders on my lawn mower during the winter.
I went out and looked and saw the pigtail on the mower is from the Opitmate and does not have a fuse.
This Optimate pigtail is the one with alligator clips.
I switched it for one with a fuse.

My Battery Tender Plus has been working just fine for the past 20 years. While it is kind of cumbersome due to its relatively large and vented metal case, it certainly has been reliable and seems to work very well. Still, sometimes electronic stuff just decides to go haywire and it doesn't hurt to have a fuse in the way of potential trouble.