I inherited a Snap On Blue Point YA166 battery charger from a garage tenant. (65/75 amp charge 480 amp start assist). It's a large charger on wheels. It's not working. Negative clamp has a light which is supposed to glow when it's attached to a battery even with the charger off. It doesn't glow. There is no current coming from the charging cables when it's turned on. It does sound like it's working. The fan runs and the 'charger' changes tone when going from high to low.
Anyone have any idea what might be wrong with it and whether it's worth taking it apart to try and diagnose it?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

The cables are probably toast. If they are good then it's fried. Usually not worth fixing if the transformer is bad.

__________________
“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”
― Brian P. Cleary, You Oughta Know By Now

Any idea on how to determine if the transformer is bad? Opened it up and can't see any obvioius problems. Cables show continuity back to the transformer.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

If you are not getting 12V at the lead ends and the cables are good then the only thing left is the transformer. You could take a look at the wiring leading to the transformer but other than that...

Could be rectifier, diodes, transformer, the list goes on.

YAH166B Snap-On Battery Charger Parts List

Toss it. It's junk. I've had three or four of those units go bad and the Snap-On dealer just laughed when I asked about warranty.

Not knocking Snap-On, I'm definitely a Snap-On kind of guy but their electronics stuff just doesn't hold up.

__________________
“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”
― Brian P. Cleary, You Oughta Know By Now

I have heard this same story over the years. At least twice.

And both times the final answer was it was too expensive to repair.

But all is not lost! You can rip out the insides and install a battery charger inside the case. With a little wiring work you can hook it up through the existing cables.

Then you will have a charger that is easy to move. You would just have to open the case to turn it off or on.

Not familiar with this model or brand. I pick up quite a few non working battery chargers at yard sales for usually a dollar each. The newer ones must be total garbage as the majority of times they appear to have not seen much service at all. Before they failed.

If the transformer is still good as they persist in using old fashion selenium rectifiers.

If they short they stink. On the smaller chargers I have purchased I have just bridged the old open selenium rectifiers with silicone diodes. The rectifier was always open so far.

Then I just usually give them away to anyone I think needs one. Up to the seventy five dollar new models it seems to always be the same thing. Only costs me a total of 1.30 or so with purchase to make them even better than when they last worked in total. Perhaps better than new even I suspect as the silicone rectifiers are not failure prone usually.

In Kerry's case I would first check to see if the transformer is still putting out ac. Plus the 110 volt input is present at the transformer. If not scrap it. Yet if it passes these tests anything else may be cheap to deal with.

Battery chargers in general are not complex. Also look up this model on the net to see what is the common failure in these battery chargers with the high rate boost function.

I base this on also seeing a lot of them over the years just sitting around but no longer working. I have never had a use for them so never explored them.

I gave up and handed it to the local scrap metal guy. No voltage coming from the transformer. Too bulky anyway.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Many of these are so called garage rated chargers where abused so even establishing if the power cord is still good is not a bad ideal. That's why I would quickly check for 110v at the transformer. Or a continuity loop from the plug ends.

From what I have observed over the years most chargers labeled for car battery charging are of poor quality. Many are just junk basically. Why in this day would you not use solid state silicone diodes as rectifiers for example?

Produce them as cheap as humanly possible perhaps and design them to just get past any warranty period? Some extra lightly used will probably last quite awhile but many will still fail.

For a dollar delivered you can get some diodes with an adequate current reading mailed to you from China on ebay. Install them in parallel with the selenium rectifiers and those cheap chargers may go a lifetime.

So personally I use other chargers that have seemed to have lasted forever. They are multiple application power supplies. They have voltage and current gauges and are adjustable for battery charging rates. I just have them from my old electronic servicing years. Some I even purchased well used over fifty years ago and they still run well.

I imagine originally they were meant to service car tube radios etc originally.

Anyways when charging your car batteries read up on the safety precautions. One ignition of the charging process gases can ruin your day.

It does happen and is basically an explosion when it does. How frequently? All I know is that it happened to a couple of friends over the years. Just a spark when disconnection the active battery charger is all it took.

Back in the days when Dinosaurs ruled the earth I worked in a service station. Nothing unusual about that. Lots of teenagers did since it seemed like there was one on every street corner and all of then needed cheap help.

We had one of these and charged batteries for $1. I think it took an hour for a 'quick charge'; overnight for a deep charge.

This is when minimum wage was about 50 cents an hour or something. Maybe 65 cents. In any case $1 was real money to a lot of our customers.

And they expected us to use real equipment, hence these giant chargers. I would tell my friends to just put the battery back in the car, jump the engine and let the thing charge up. Gas was about 21 cents a gallon. Sometimes you could find it for 18 cents.

In any case running the car at idle for two hours was cheaper than paying me a dollar for the same thing.

You could buy a new battery then for $15. Or you could buy a weeks worth of groceries with the same money. My last battery cost $186.

Now excuse me. There are kids on my lawn and I need to yell at them.