ORIGINAL: Tim@MRC
No problem...FYI - I just tested it to see what I would get. I was able to charge an 8 cell pack at almost 7 amps from a 12 volt car battery. And the car battery was reading under 12 volts. So that's not too bad. Yeah, those batteries are expensive. Your 989 didn't come with 12 volt clips? They should connect directly to the banana plugs on the charger. They would've been in the same bag as the little metal stand and the Velcro strap.
Duuh! Yeah, Tim the 12V clips came with the charger. My bad. They went into our pit box when we installed Sermos/PowerPole connectors on the input side of the charger. We attached dual leads to the plugs; one Sermos/PowerPole, and one Tamiya std. That way we can run two chargers at once off the MRC power supply. Must have been having a 'senior moment' and didn't tumble to, "Hey this will work with a 12V battery too..." sorry.
Next challenge we need help with is the little green output plug. For field use, the wires just won't stay under the hold down screws. They always seem to come loose when we're frantically trying to re-peak between rounds of drag racing. 39.08V indicated on the charger when that happens. We've cut off and re-soldered the ends; even used heat-shrink tubing and a length of 12ga insulated wire to support the output leads in hope of taking the strain off the little green connector. Nada work.
Is there an engineering fix in place for this, like maybe a molded plug assembly? We're ready to try removing the case cover and hard wiring directly to the board next. What are your suggestions or remedies, or is this an isolated case?
A removeable plug is not really necessary for our application. FWIW, and IOHO, we'd rather have an industry standard Tamiya hard wired to the charger board. We can attach adapters to that. Oh! And, a backlit display would be nice for night racing. Might you all have that available as a customer-install option?
Glad you're here online to support us.
Regards,
//AC//
Team AHR43