Davenset Junior Model Home Battery Charger
The last owner of our house left behind a load of old tat, some of it has become useful. This old battery charger was found rotting at the back of a cupboard, it looked to have had better days. I had a car battery that had gone dead, and my new fangled Halfords battery charger wouldn't charge it as there's some protection built into the charger to stop it delivering a charge to things that have no charge. I needed an old fashioned protectionless charger and this would fit the bill.
First things first to disasemble re-assess and clean all the wildlife from it. First inspection I could see it needed battery clips as these were missing, also the plug was rusty, missing a screw and badly wired and the glass on the ammeter had broken off and the needle had rusted away.
The central part of the case had rusted so I cleaned and treated it with some Kurust and then painted it with some left over car wheel paint. the front and back panels have only minor rust spots and I wanted to keep the labels and patina (also saving me time in having to paint it) so these were cleaned and polished with a spot of wax car polish.
The ammeter was next to useless so a search ensued for another one, I had one from an old car but it was much larger in diameter and deeper in profile, I ruled this out as it would have taken a lot of work to fit. I managed to find a new ammeter on Amazon for not a lot of money so ordered that, it required me filing the hole on the front panel out by a couple millimeters and drilling holes for the screws.
Once all cleaned, I checked the cables they were in good condition still, I trimmed the cables for the battery clips to the same length and bought two new clips off of ebay and fitted those. I found a plug in the garage so trimmed the power lead and fitted the plug, it's a lot more secure and safe than the last one!
Finally I put it all back together, and put it into service, it works perfectly now, I was worried about just fitting new plug and clamps and pressing it into service without opening it up first as I couldn't tell what had crawled into it that may have shorted it and maybe caused a fire.
I'm quite please with the result, It works a treat and I think it looks quite good. I need to fix it to the wall in the garage when I find the right spot for it.
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