After reading the post about using a locator in a canoe I thought I would try my VX-1 this weekend at the cabin. I put a battery in the tray and hooked up the charger but didn’t plug it in the wall yet. Dog was barking and went to check on him, it was a neighbor and his dog. When I got back my garage had a terrible smell and this is what I found. The wire was melted all the way to the charger.
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If it wasn’t bad, it is now! Are you sure you had the leads connected correctly? Or perhaps the wires of the charger cable were shorted.
Thankfully it didn’t end up any worse than that!
It’s instances like this why I dont like to leave chargers unattended. Even trickle chargers. Glad you didnt lose any real estate!
Is that first picture of the locator? Did it melt as well?
I am extremely curious as to what would make this happen? With it unplugged, and the charger relatively unmelted, what the duece?
My first >guess< would be it has nothing to do with the charger.
I’m not sure if this would happen if the battery connections were reversed. I would think there would be protection against reverse polarity(?)
But that’s the only thing that comes to mind.
The locator was not plugged into the battery. So the battery must have gotten that hot that it burned it also. The leads were on correct, neighbor told me he thinks the wires going into the charger may have frayed over time and shorted there. Yes I would have lost everything if the Plam top would have burned. This was my only locator and we have had a great run together.
I put a battery in the tray and hooked up the charger but didn’t plug it in the wall yet.
I think this is the key. If you didn’t even plug it in, then even hooking it up backwards wouldn’t matter. There must have been some short in the charger wires.
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