For a little more direct approach to stop vandals messing with your vehicle you could go to the farm store and get a good hot electric fence charger and wire it up to your car.If you want to get real fancy you could get one of the 12 volt battery operated ones and wire it up through a remote key fob switch. Just remember to turn it off before going for a drive.
No, that idea might work for some, but I don't have an AC outlet available near the car, and I think a DC operated one would just run the battery down.
The problem is that I think that I know who the punks and punkess are, and they are not little or kids. I don't want to just surprise them, I want to nab them. That is why I'm still looking for a good point and shoot zoom camera that I can afford.
Hmm, I just checked the light, and it is already showing a full charge on the LEDs, even though is has only been charging ~5.5 hours. Should I really continue charging for 24 hours, as the instructions say?
I would leave it charging. If you disconnect the charger and check the battery right away, you're testing a residual from the charger. For a true test, disconnect the charger and let the light sit for an hour or two then test.
Reasonable, but the part that doesn't make sense to me about the instructions, is that the initial charge should be greater than the maximum routine charge. I would understand that better if the battery arrived totally without any charge, but that was not the case, since the LEDs alit indicating that it already had a medium charge in it. This, plus the fact that there was no sign of a seal of any kind on the box or the bag containing the light, makes me wonder if it had been used previously (open box/returned)? Even if I accepted that didn't reflect that the light was defective in any fashion, it would mean that it had already had it's initial charge, and to do it again would exceed it's routine maximan charge time, which would run the risk of damaging the battery.
The partial charge occurs during manufacturing. They never come fully charged. Even if they did fully charge them, the battery self discharges over time. The only battery type that I know of that comes fully charged from the factory is lead-acid. The initial long charge is to insure the battery doesn't develop a "memory" for the partial charge. This has always been a problem with NiCd batteries. I'm not sure about NiMh but it's always good to follow the manufacturer's instructions. They must know something.
The battery in this light is lead acid, and as far as I know, there is no charge memory involved with that type of battery. I know that I have bought automotive lead acid batteries that had no charge at all, until the sale, when it was put on a charger, but that may have only been those batteries that had no acid in them, until added...I can't remember. The only reason I can think of for them to pre-charge the battery during manufacture is to test the light, but that could easily been done by some other means.
EDIT: If they had pre-charged the battery during manufacture, then I wouldn't understand why they wanted the user to charge it again for so long before first use.
Since I haven't received a response to a query I sent to the seller yesterday, I just sent another to WaganTech. Hope one of them responds soon.
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