Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I haven't used my vagabond 2 battery since last fall.

Yesterday was the first time I bough the Vagabond 2 battery unit and my flash outside to do a shoot.

After a night of charging the battery, I thought it was full. However, when I got to the location, my vagabond 2 refuses to turn on. Is my battery dead?

I went home and charged the battery for another 3-4 hours. When I unplug it and try to turn it on, it refuses to turn on.

I have the battery since Nov. 2008. This is the first time that I have experience the battery acting this way.

What can I do?

If you haven't charged it since last fall then there is a good chance that the battery is shot. What do you mean by "won't turn on".... no led lights at all? What about when it is plugged in to the wall? Will it run a strobe when plugged in? What lights come on when you charge it, initially and after a several hours?

If the battery is dead enough, it may still not run a light when plugged into the wall.

If you still have the clamp leads that shipped with the unit, you can use those to attach the inverter to a car battery. If it runs from the car batery, the inverter is OK. You can also take a battery to an auto parts store for testing (voltage alone does not tell you the whole story). As stated, if it has not been charged since fall, particularly if stored initially with a low charge, then the battery is probably dead.

When I plug the battery directly into the wall, the LED comes on and I can use my strobe.

As soon as I unplug it from the wall and try to turn it on, nothing happens.

Does this mean I have to replace the battery to fix the issue? Or do I have to replace something else as well?

Thank you for your help.

Sounds like a dead battery. I would follow TS's suggestion and take it to an auto parts store to have them test it to make sure. A new battery is probably all you need to get you going again - it sounds like this one died from lack of maintenance.

There is a slight chance that the inverter is not putting out the correct charging voltage but that does not sound like the culprit based on what you've described. If you are handy with a multimeter then you could check just to make sure but if not then I wouldn't worry about it.

There is the chance the charger is defective, but either way, the battery almost certainly is. To check the charger, disconnect the battery, plug the inverter into the wall, and meter the contacts for the battery connection. This should read 13.8VDC. If you are not comfortable doing this, then please do not try.

I have two Vagabond II units. One functions just fine, but the other seems to have a bad battery. After reading this thread, I took both down to my local Advance Auto Parts for testing. The test on the "bad" unit showed just over 4 volts. The store clerk volunteered to keep it over night on the store charger and test it again to verify the battery itself was the problem and not the Vagabond charger. I won't know the outcome of that until tomorrow.

The surprise came when he tested my "good" unit. It tested at 12.89 volts. However, he said he could not tell me the Ah rating. Instead, he got all excited about the Cold Crank Amps (CCA) being only 100. For comparison, he then tested a new 12V20 battery he had in stock, which tested at 492 CCA. He told me my "good" battery was in fact NOT good and I needed to buy his new battery for $90. (He was upfront he wanted to sell me the battery.) But should I worry about the CCA rating? Does it matter if I am not using the battery to crank an engine? My "good" unit performs just fine and I have no complaints with it. And how do I find out the Ah rating?

Thank you.

I'm no engineer, but I would guess the needs of a strobe differ from the needs of a starter motor (that requires current for a much longer period of time than a strobe does to charge its capacitors).

Right, the Vagabond batteries are more like a marine or wheelchair battery. They are intended for fairly even output over long times to a deep discharge. On the otherhand, car batteries are designed to run a powerful starter motor that takes a lot of power, and run these for brief periods of time (though the time at high current is longer than that of the VII battery), then get recharged before they reach anywherere near empty. So, you have long use, low current batteries and short use high current batteries. Different tools for different applications.

If the clerk thought the battery was for a starter, then he was being at least somewhat genuine in his reccomendation.

Incidentally, if you have a multimeter (something that can read DC Voltage) you can test the charger in the inverter. You would connect everything just as you would to charge the pack, except the battery. You would place the multimeter leads to where the battery would connect and you should get 13.8VDC (no less than 13.6, no more than 14.2). Anything less, and your charging system would not be powerful enough to charge the battery.