Delco Wonderbar Mystery

[NoPegs]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Another trick is to get a used car battery charger and a 25V 2200uF capacitor to wire in parallel with it...Mine can do 20A before the fuse blows, and with the cap is clean enough to power a radio.

A note for anyone following this handy tip: Make sure that the "used" charger you're buying is of the "boatanchor" variety. The newer, lighter SMPS based chargers need some modification before being used as PSUs, and need serious filtering/chokes to be used for AM radios. "Boatanchor" types just need a filter cap and maybe punch a few holes and drop a fan into the case so they don't buzz and drive you insane after warming up. If you luck into one that has an "engine start" option you can build a small scale spot-welder. (These are usually the on-wheels variety, bigger than a "boatanchor" but I can't call them anchors because they're inherently mobile!)


If you find an identical pair of 10A (Heavy-Duty) or 20A (Marine/RV) chargers, you can extract the transformers and back-to-back them for a 130VA or 275VA poor-man's isolation transformer. Alternatively you could run 66 or 133 12AU7s in parallell.