Black & Decker BC40EWB

A nice charger. State of the art and a lot of good engineering probably went into it. It checks the battery thoroughly for any shorts, sulfonated, or open cells before applying / ramping up the amperage. I couldn't find much if any information in the manual about the algorithm or the "Recondition" function. The the alternator test is great but error messages for all features are very simplistic. There is no way to override anything. I was able to save a couple of stone cold dead batteries in my diesel van only (they are in parallel) by playing games like juicing them up a bit with another vehicle first before recharging them. The BC40EWB just refused to even try to deal with them, even in "Engine Start Mode." Perhaps if I did one at a time? Of a half a dozen batteries that I've tried to recondition, starting at being between 5 and 10 volts, some for up to 12 hours but I have not successfully been able to recover one. I tried adding distilled water to one but it's hard to guess how muc... Read more

Black & Decker battery charger The Black & Decker BC40EWB and BC40EB have the same charging technology but the BC40EB has no engine start feature. There are two different display panels going by model BC40EWB as sold by Wal-Mart in Austin Texas at the time of this writing. I do not know if one version is a later model. The one I have has a liquid crystal display that scrolls information. It is different than the one pictured in this review. I am reviewing the charger with the liquid crystal display. The unit depicted here has a red LED display and about 7 LED indicator lights. Once again, according to Black & Decker the charging technology is identical. The 5 buttons on the charger with the liquid crystal display are: Charge Battery Voltage Engine Start Battery Recond (reconditioner) Alternator check The volt meter on the charger is fairly accurate. The greatest error was 0.11 volts which is OK. The charger also monitors the current to the battery. This is an excellent feature. At a... Read more