Those Small Car Boost Pack Things. Any Good?

[OGDB]

I have had a traditional style boost pack for about 5 years now I think, I bought it very cheaply from a high street retailer and didn't expect much from it, however its done me well. I have recently had some battery drain issues and due to the age of my old boost pack I have resorted to carrying a battery and some decent jumper cables. I had read on here a long time ago about these small boost packs and since then I cant find the thread, at the time I had no interest in them so didn't really pay attention to it, however I recall a lot of contribution from members who had bought them. 

I am interested in possibly buying one, I don't necessarily want something cheap, but I am also not looking at forking out 3 figures for one. I hope to use it on up to 3.0l petrol vehicles. I have read many reviews and people seem to be complaining that it wont start their car that has sat for 12 months, well there is no surprise there really. I do not intend to use it like this, I intend to use if for a battery which has dropped to possibly 9V at the lowest. I intend to take the car on a few longer journeys and I would like to have it as a bit of touch wood which I can leave in the glovebox and call on if I really need to, which hopefully I wont. it would also be very helpful for when I go away fishing for charging my devices. 

Can anyone recommend a compact boost pack, or possibly even ones to avoid and do they actually work as advertised? 

Thanks very much. 



 

[Kelvinator]

Ive used the cheap Chinese ones before. Its good for something that is juuuuust too far gone to start without a boost, but don't expect it to work too well on something big and very dead.

I think mine has packed it in now though and wont charge >_<

[OGDB]

Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking online and they seem to vary from around £50 up to over £300, its hard to tell what is decent and what is not when you haven't a clue what you're looking at!


NOCO seem to be a decent enough brand with good reports but I am a bit reluctant to fork out that kind of money for one!

[froggy]

Have a couple of 2000a noco at work , £130 and as good as the snap on Jump pack unless the battery is properly dead

[Laters]

I've got a couple of the glovebox sized boost packs.
Always carry one in the boot of the car.
Never needed to use either on my own cars but both have started everything I have asked them too.
Both were got on ebay for not a lot.

Last time I used mine was on a neighbours car. Grandson was starting and moving his late grandfathers car out of the garage as the house had sold. Car wouldn't start & they had tried to push it up the slightly sloping drive but failed.
He came across and asked if I could help. Got the boost pack out of the boot and he laughed saying it would never start the car.
30 seconds later it was running.

Not sure they would start anything that required lots of cranking but have never let me down.

[slater]

The good thing about the lithium ion packs is they have a large current rating for thier size so if youre looking for somthing to get the car running after leaving your lights on or whatever they are great. They don't have much capacity however so you don't get many attempts to start before they will go flat.

[ChasR]

Oct 20, 2019 13:11:12 GMT OGDB said:

Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking online and they seem to vary from around £50 up to over £300, its hard to tell what is decent and what is not when you haven't a clue what you're looking at!


NOCO seem to be a decent enough brand with good reports but I am a bit reluctant to fork out that kind of money for one!

Yup, I have the 2000A GB70.

It has started my Mondeo on a super dead battery (the dash would not really light up and the engine didn't even click into place) and that was me not using the booster button either! It fired my Merc up many times prior to me getting a battery for it ; the previous owner fitted a too small a battery which in the cold UK climate just kept on dying.

The other one I am very impressed with is the Anti-Gravity XPS-10. On my M3 with a super dead battery, it fired that up without a care in the world. For it to start a high compression 3.2 petrol, it's not bad . It also fired up my dad's 535d as well as a poor elderly chap's 2.0 Tiguan

As for the user saying it struggles on a dead battery, I had to 'work' mine a little it seems to get it better. I rarely use mine. My garage uses their GB70 all of the time and swears by it, and he's a SnapOn Jump pack guy normally.

The Lidl ones are OK, but they can struggle on a 2.0 or more.

I know adam73bgt has the GB40 1000A Noco, which he has been happy with. I sort of which I went with one over their size, but I was/am aware that a future car of mine may well become a 3.0 diesel of sorts.

[adam73bgt]

Yeah I've been happy with the Noco one. When I used to have my rather dead E34, it would happily start it up now and then when I needed to move it about, that was "only" a 2.0 straight 6, but had a pretty high cold cranking amp requirement

[Frankenhealey]

My Noco GB70 gives the Goddess' 5.9 litre Cummins a good kick up the backside when the 1100aH main battery is feeling a little jaded. Also starts both 2CV's which need a lot of cranking if not used for a while.

[jpr1977]

Was this the thread you were thinking of

forum.retro-rides.org/thread/207997/bought-portable-jumper-pack-small

[madmog]

Could you just leave one of these connected in parallel to the lead acid battery to slow down the drain from the clock or other permanently connected devices?

[ChasR]

Oct 31, 2019 21:30:26 GMT madmog said:

Could you just leave one of these connected in parallel to the lead acid battery to slow down the drain from the clock or other permanently connected devices?

In theory you could, but it wouldn't effectively charge up the battery as well as a smart charger.

You're best off getting:

-A more powerful smartcharger ; TBH, even a 4 Amp pulse charger will be fine
-Correcting the source of the drain.

Well, to add another bit of praise for the GB70, regarding the doubters, I lent mine to a mate to start his Honda NSX; a larger than normal engine with a decent chunk of compression to it for a petrol engine. In short,

-My battery tester wouldn't even power up off the battery ; it was that flat
-Car showed zero signs of life.

We had to bypass the safety parts of the Noco and put it into 'Manual' mode as it couldn't detect a battery on the car ; Remember it was super flat as suggested above. With that, it started the car without a hitch.

It started my Mondeo 2.5 Turbo fine as well.

[madmog]

Nov 1, 2019 6:37:21 GMT ChasR said:

Oct 31, 2019 21:30:26 GMT madmog said:

Could you just leave one of these connected in parallel to the lead acid battery to slow down the drain from the clock or other permanently connected devices?

In theory you could, but it wouldn't effectively charge up the battery as well as a smart charger.

You're best off getting:

-A more powerful smartcharger ; TBH, even a 4 Amp pulse charger will be fine
-Correcting the source of the drain.

Well, to add another bit of praise for the GB70, regarding the doubters, I lent mine to a mate to start his Honda NSX; a larger than normal engine with a decent chunk of compression to it for a petrol engine. In short,

-My battery tester wouldn't even power up off the battery ; it was that flat
-Car showed zero signs of life.

We had to bypass the safety parts of the Noco and put it into 'Manual' mode as it couldn't detect a battery on the car ; Remember it was super flat as suggested above. With that, it started the car without a hitch.

It started my Mondeo 2.5 Turbo fine as well.

I'm thinking for something like a tracker or alarm which needs to be connected but perhaps they could be connected with a dedicated smart charger and a diode so that the lead acid battery can charge it but no the other way around?

[ChasR]

IME they do not drain as bad as people think as long as it is a decent one. Even then, a car charger (smartcharger) can take care of that. I or the previous owners didn't have a diode etc. in line, and the charger would always go to a mantaining mode.

As an example my Escort RS Turbo had a significant drain to the battery. The last two owners thought it was the immobiliser. The battery would barely last two weeks without it being charged in that time.

The actual drain was a mis-wired clock bulb, which was on all of the time. Yup ; that amount of a drain was enough to cause it to not start.

I could leave the car for months then and it would fire up fine.

[NudgerSS]

I’ve got one of those Sealey Estart jobbies that uses capacitors rather than a battery. Never had to use it but they do seem to have a good rep.

[jim]

I got a Clarke one from machine mart on a VAT free day - it's been a good unit

[soupacharged]

As above I've got a Noco one and it managed to start my 2.7l RS4 when the battery was so flat it wouldn't even hold the code in the radio.

[brachunky]

Got one from Costco in the summer and was put to good use twice last night on my sons WAV. Like many, I was really doubtful about whether something the size of an old 30's fag packet could start a car!

[ChasR]

Here's another sit-rep.

I have since bought another jump starter. a GB40, so it can double up as a batte.ry bank for me to take out as well as a starter for the car.

Pros:
-It can jump start a dead Mondeo 2.5T (Volvo lump). It did struggle a little but then again, I just chucked it on and turned the key, ignoring the 30 seconds it says to leave it on. It fired up first time
-Small size is far more versatile
-Quicker to charge off a USB compared to the GB70

Cons:
-The battery size isn't as big as you think. I can charge up my iPhone 11 from dead and then it will begin to run out of power with one light left on); My pocket sized Anker battery pack can in comparison, charge the iPhone over 3 times over. That said, it doesn't have a torch like the Noco and neither can it start a car....


My GB70 got called into a jump starting a Jag XJS V12. This car was so dead, it wouldn't even power any of the lights up off its own battery. I hooked it up, left it for around 20 seconds. The first time, the car turned over slowly. The second time, it turned over a little quicker and fired up on around 7 cylinders. My Merc, it turned over without a care in the world.

For that, the GB70 gets my vote. The GB40 is OK if you fancy a 'get out of jail free' pack in the car, which can start it if you are in the middle of nowhere.

[ChasR]

Another bump!

It's not good to bring threads back from the dead but it is relevant.

The GB40 has been tested again a

So, what about the GB40?
-My Merc 280SE 4.5 had a super flat battery thanks to me leaving on the interior light for a week. Woops!
-It struggled to start it when the battery was super dead, but eventually it did. I noticed that one issue was it kept on flicking between 'jump mode' and 'non jump/off' mode in the normal setting due to the voltage drop. In the end I bypassed the safety circuits which got around this ; it's called the 'override' function on this or a 'boost' mode on other jump packs. After leaving it on 30 seconds, it did then fire the Merc up, albeit only kust
-Once the Merc had enough juice it was fine.
-There is a caveat to this. A week later, my Merc refused to have compliant electrics, where corroded battery terminals to the posts and the wires themselves were found as the root cause. Once this was done the car started fine ; I do wonder if this affected the above, so the jump pack could have worked better potentially. But for it's size you could argue it's worth keeping one in the car you drive. It got me out of the curse word that day!