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My husband is currently deployed, and I let his car sit too long and the battery died (oops). Well, we had been meaning to buy one of these for awhile now, because it's always good to have something like this and not have to rely on strangers. I decided that now was the perfect time to buy one. Especially since my husband's car was in the garage and I didn't feel like pushing it out in order to jump it.
The unit arrived in the mail and I plugged it into the wall and charged it for 24 hours. It notes that you shouldn't charge it for more than 48 hours, because it can get overcharged and break. It was neat to note that it has slots for plugging in other devices and even a USB port. I suppose in chase you lose power, you could use this to charge a cell phone or something. Also has a flash light on the front, which helps if you're needing to use this on the side of the road one night.
Well, I have never jump started a car before... never even seen someone do it. I read over the instructions, checked my vehicle's owners manual, just to make sure that my car battery was "negative grounded", and then attached the red positive cable to the positive part of the battery, and the black cable to a metal bolt on the car. It did spark when I attached the black cable, which was a little scary for me. The instructions said to leave attached for 3-4 minutes. I left it on for about 15, because my friend said that whenever she's used something like this, they'd leave it attached for maybe 30 minutes. So, after 15 minutes, I went to turn the car on, and voila! It started! I then disconnected the cables, negative first, then positive.
So, basically I love this thing. It's really quite small, about the size of a lunch box. It's comforting to know that I can keep this in the trunk of my car, and if I needed a jump, I could take care of it myself. Especially living in Washington state, driving between Spokane and Seattle, my husband and I find ourselves in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception quite frequently. What a life saver it is!
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had this a little while now and today got to use the jumper on a friends truck and it worked perfectly. charged it up when i got it and played with the compressor and it worked fine. had not recharged it in about a month and used the jumper today, it worked good. i am satisfied with it. had several that were bigger than this one and they did not work as good.Best Deals for Wagan 300 Amp Battery Jumper
Needed to use jumper for the first time 6 months after I bought it. Went to put on positive clamp (made of plastic) and it broke in two at the hinge such that it could no longer clamp onto anything. Luckily I was at home and used a woodworking clamp to attach the jumper clamp to the battery. Car did start fine. It turned out my car had developed some type of power drain while the car was turned off, so I ended up using the jumper a few times like this before I was finally able to get the drain problem fixed. As long as I kept the jumper charged it did jump my battery just fine. 1 year warrany requires me to pay to ship unit back to manufacturer too much money considering the cost of the jumper. I originally bought the jumper for my boat in case I had a problem on the water. But as best I can tell from the pictures at their web site, it looks like all the similar Wagan jumpers all have plastic clamps. I can't afford to worry that my jumper might break again when I need it. I'm going to find a jumper with metal clamps.Honest reviews on Wagan 300 Amp Battery Jumper
Both my and my friend's car batteries died due to the cold this past week. Admittedly, we had both been gone for thanksgiving break and had not driven them in a week or so, so they were totally dead (not turning over at all). I got this off Amazon, and I figured it would do the trick. I charged it the full 48 hours, and put it on my car for 10-15 minutes and while the lights turned on and the radio did too, the car didn't come close to turning over. I tried multiple times to no avail. Same thing with my roommate we ended up having to jump it the old fashioned way.So, I will say, if your car is turning over but not enough to catch, I think this charger will do the trick and giving you the extra juice to start it up. However, if your battery is completely dead (not turning over at all) this charger will not start your car.
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I live on a college campus, so most everything is within walking distance for me. Add to that the fact that I'm a total shut-in, and that means my car can just sit there in the parking lot for weeks at a time. Not surprisingly, the battery is often dead.I bought this gadget so that I can jump start my car, figuring the battery would get charged while I'm driving anyway. It works quite well. Lets me start my car two or maybe even three times before it gives out. But that's the thing: after three times you have to charge it again because it's already drained. I can still operate the electronics and lights on my car while it's hooked up, but it doesn't have the juice to actually jump start it.
You're probably better off getting one of the bigger models so that you have more than a few shots before you need to recharge. It takes about 30 hours to recharge fully according to the manual, so if you're out of juice, you're done for the day pretty much. I think that's just a general limitation of batteries and power sockets, and not the model itself, though. But it's just easier to charge once for say 60 hours and know that you have more than a couple shots.
Besides that, this unit is solidly built. I'm not afraid of accidentally breaking it. The jumper cables are very solid and long enough to easily reach the battery. The air compressor is a nice touch. When you're on the road, it's more likely you'll get a flat tire than have your car battery die. You can also charge USB devices through this, but it's hard to imagine when you'd need to.
All in all it's great, but you might want a bigger model if you have a bigger car. Mine's a Hyundai Elantra and this thing can barely jump start it (but it does it!).
