I've got a cheap car quest battery charger that also works as a battery tender. The indicator light that illuminated when fully charged is no longer working. I tried a different LED but the voltage was too low to light it up.

My question is how can I test the charger to see if it still functioning properly?
I know I could run a multimeter inline with one of the cables but it will burn it up right quick. I can check the battery's charge but that doesn't seem to tell me much.
Maybe a continuity test?

I only want to check if the charger is pulsing on a and off when its "tending' the battery.

Anyway I would love to hear peoples opinion on how to test it, or whether to worry about it.

 

How does checking that the battery is indeed maintaining a charge not indicative of the battery charger/tender not working? Explain that please.

 

Got to agree with grumblemarc, the only other way I can think of is to connect up a meter to the batt. along with the charger, [parallel] see what voltage is, [should be around 12.5V on a fully charged batt.] turn on the charger, see what voltage is, [should go up, how much will depend on the charger] and sit down and wait to see if charger "pulses" off, [voltage should go back down to around 12.5V] and then wait again to see if the charger "pulses" back on, [voltage should go up again].

Kind of a PITA, but other then getting the correct LED, I only see those two as options. 94

 

Thanks for the replies. Maybe my multimeter is just shoddy, when i've taken readings on the battery it jumps around too much to see a base line to compare with.

Maybe testing it on a dead-ish battery will make it clearer, anyway thanks again and I'll re-check.