WILL NOT CHARGE A COMPLETELY DEAD BATTERY
I bought one of these to charge the batteries of 2 vehicles that had been sitting for 7 months while I was away. I figured that with the ability to crank an engine for 5 seconds, I could probably get a vehicle started or at least charge the battery. The first attempt was on my car with a completely dead battery--no voltage at all. The charger wouldn't even recognize that it was connected to the battery--probably a result of a safety "feature" which may need to sense voltage to know it is connected to a battery. Since it didn't sense it was connected to a battery, it would not apply a charge or provide any cranking power.
Next I tried it on the battery of my truck which had a little voltage left, but not enough to start the engine. The 5 second starting power of the charger would not turn the engine over. It did, however, charge the battery overnight and the truck started right up the next morning. I then used the truck to jumpstart the car with the completely dead battery and allowed the car to run for about a half hour. This gave the battery enough voltage so that the charger could then recognize it was connected and supply a charge to the battery. After about 6 hours, the car battery was fully charged and a test indicated that the battery was not faulty.
After all this, I returned the charger to Amazon and bought a Sears premium one that had better specs for about the same price and was told it WOULD start a completely dead battery. Had some similiar looking control panel items to the Schumacher charger so may be same manufacturer. Haven't had a chance to try on completely dead battery.
If you buy the Schumacher SC-8000A, don't expect to charge a completely dead battery or crank anything other than a very small engine.
Shipment packing from Amazon was poor--it allowed the heavy charger to bang around in the box. When I turned the charger upside down, parts inside moved around--not a good sign.
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