E - Teardown

The plug itself might handle 16A, but not the cable that was attached to it.

When I cracked it open, I actually saw the solder 'joint' break. Made by a proud master-solderer, no doubt.

Not my best work, but I was disgruntled.

That wall-wart is a piece of crap. It claims to spit out 12V DC, capable of 500mA. I used my dummy-load to test it a bit. I had to pull close to 700mA out of it to make its output drop to 12V. It will go into the recycling bin right away. Fortuitously I found a switch-mode power supply that goes up to 15V. I'll use that one instead. As the wallwart only consisted of a transformer, rectifier diodes and a cap, all the battery charging logic must be in the car-jump-start device itself. Shouldn't be an issue.

I say: LIAR.

To be honest, I didn't expect to see a smoothng cap in there.

This pad delaminated instantly! I barely touched it with 300°C.

My car has declared war on me. The last time the battery was dead, it was the radio. It pulled 500mA in stand-by. Now the battery is dead again... I hope it wasn't caused by some critter gnawing at cables. That could be expensive... Didn't manage to start my car today again ;-( The more I use this thing, the less I like it. I only get about a minute worth of cranking out of it. The battery claims 17Ah, but given that the charging circuit doesn't really permit more than say 400mA of current... I can't really be sure this thing was really full. Maybe the battery is a piece of crap as well. When it didn't even turn the starter any more, the test-button still indicated 75% full. But that only measures voltage... Internal resistance seems a bit on the high side. If the starter pulls say 250A, I'd expect to get at least 2 minutes on starter action out of this thing... I guess I'd haven been much better off buying a car-battery charger... It seems this thing is really only good for assisting a weak battery, not to fully replace it. Oh well...

The innards of my newly acquired starter-box for my car. Today I tried in vain to get it going. Will try again tomorrow - hopefully with a fully charged battery.

You don't want ANY conductive parts floating around right next to a massive battery.

I was quite impressed by this.