Not wanting to chuck the unit for a simple dead battery, I set about the task of disassembling the Electromate. There are screws all over the thing, which were deep enough to require a special extra-long screw driver to reach. Once I'd found all of the screws (harder than it sounds...they were hiding all over!) it came apart fairly easily. The battery was fairly obvious and easily unhooked and removed from the unit's guts. I tracked down a replacement battery on Amazon (this thing
). Amazon had the best price by far, plus free shipping and no tax.
). Amazon had the best price by far, plus free shipping and no tax.
Replacement arrived and fit perfectly into the unit. Installed the replacement easily enough. Now to test it...first, inverter comes on. Success! But not so fast...ONLY the inverter would come on. Everything else was completely dead--battery indicator, air pump, LED light, etc. I fiddled a bit, but it's done for, and not worth keeping around just for the battery-powered inverter.
However, it looks like I'm stuck with the battery unless I can resell it on eBay or something--Amazon won't accept returns for the battery because it's hazardous. So I am stuck with the battery...guess I got a bit burned on this one. Electromate broken and now stuck with a battery I have no current use for. Awesome.
So now I am in the market for a replacement jump starter thing. I may just buy a standalone jump starter and then get cigarette lighter inverters for each vehicle...as handy as the Electromate was, it was pretty big and took up a lot of space in the trunk. Something more compact would be nice.
