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Why would the charger burn out if the batteries are, as you put it, "too dead"? I always thought it would be the other way around: if someone left the batteries on charge too long, then the charger would burn out from overheating. Can't imagine how the thing would fail when charging batteries having little or no charge left in them. BTW, were the chargers used with the batteries in those motorized ride-ons just heavy-duty generic wall-warts, or were they so unique to the toy they were used with that when the charger went bad, the toy could no longer be used because the charger was by now NLA? I have a friend in my hometown whose daughter had one of these ride-on motorized cars when she was a kid; the toy quit after about two years or so (a rough estimate on my part). Could it have quit because of the same problem, i. e. the batteries being allowed to go dead and the charger subsequently failed from overheating? How long did it take the makers of these cars to start putting thermal fuses in the battery chargers? I would think if these things actually caught fire when they overheated, the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) would have been alerted forthwith and a law subsequently passed that all such chargers must be equipped, effective immediately, with fuses or circuit breakers. I realize hindsight is always 20/20 but this is ridiculous and inexcusable, not necessarily in that order. Obviously such a law did go into effect if later versions of these chargers (including current ones, of course) were in fact equipped with fuses; however, my point is that many, many fires could have been prevented had the CPSC required from the beginning that manufacturers of these toys fuse the chargers against overheating and/or overloads.
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Jeff, WB8NHV Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002 Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten. |
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