stuartb3502
- Jan 12, 2023
- 5
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2023
- Messages
- 5
Hi,
I'm taking tentative early steps in mending stuff and hoping to go from there to making things. For practice, I am trying to replace a couple of capacitors on the 12v output of a car battery charger. This was mine from new, a few years old and was working until I plugged it in one day and it died. Visual inspection showed that a couple of the caps at the output (12v) had literally gone pop spewing their contents around. I am confident I can replace the two caps.
But there is another component which appears missing nearby (see picture). This is marked K1 which I understand suggests it may have been a relay or contactor of some sort. You can also see the spaces for the two missing caps (C10 and C11).

Although this is a cheap charger and I could just replace, I want to fix it for the challenge and to learn.
I have gone to the trouble of obtaining a similar charger (essentially the same but with a different brand name). That one does indeed have a small switch as shown below which is marked as being in the OFF position. The switch is not accessible from outside the case (i.e. it would seem to have no purpose for a user).

The switch is connected between the two right most pins (as seen above) of a connector block. The LCD display plugs into that connector block on the other side of this board. It appears as though the switch, if closed, would connect a pin on the display to a chip on the reverse side of the board.
Looking again at the broken charger it doesn't look like there was a similar switch in that spot although something was clearly there.
So I'm a bit stumped as to what this could have been and wondered whether better brains and those with some actual knowledge of circuits
might have some answers or at least suggestions for things to look at. It's a bit of a fun mystery at this stage with an element of being stubborn about wanting to fix something/not landfill something given it just needs a couple of caps and bit of solder plus whatever this thing is.
Given that the new charger's switch is open, my next step will be just to replace the caps and see what happens, but I was hoping someone might have some ideas.
Thanks.
I'm taking tentative early steps in mending stuff and hoping to go from there to making things. For practice, I am trying to replace a couple of capacitors on the 12v output of a car battery charger. This was mine from new, a few years old and was working until I plugged it in one day and it died. Visual inspection showed that a couple of the caps at the output (12v) had literally gone pop spewing their contents around. I am confident I can replace the two caps.
But there is another component which appears missing nearby (see picture). This is marked K1 which I understand suggests it may have been a relay or contactor of some sort. You can also see the spaces for the two missing caps (C10 and C11).

Although this is a cheap charger and I could just replace, I want to fix it for the challenge and to learn.
I have gone to the trouble of obtaining a similar charger (essentially the same but with a different brand name). That one does indeed have a small switch as shown below which is marked as being in the OFF position. The switch is not accessible from outside the case (i.e. it would seem to have no purpose for a user).

The switch is connected between the two right most pins (as seen above) of a connector block. The LCD display plugs into that connector block on the other side of this board. It appears as though the switch, if closed, would connect a pin on the display to a chip on the reverse side of the board.
Looking again at the broken charger it doesn't look like there was a similar switch in that spot although something was clearly there.
So I'm a bit stumped as to what this could have been and wondered whether better brains and those with some actual knowledge of circuits
Given that the new charger's switch is open, my next step will be just to replace the caps and see what happens, but I was hoping someone might have some ideas.
Thanks.