Power Station Battery Upgrade

Power stations like this Schumacher SJ1332 are for more than just emergencies. While you can use one to jumpstart a car, you can also power small 120V AC and 12V DC electrical loads. I like to bring mine along camping and use it to charge cell phones and run a string of Christmas lights.

Shrinkflation

Years ago I purchased a power station similar to this one. More recently, I bought another one. To my surprise, the new power station would only get me through one night of camping, instead of two. Sure enough, they switched over to a smaller / cheaper battery.

You can see it when you remove the door that covers the battery compartment. To remove the door, there's 6 screws, two screws at the bottom corners, where the soft plastic is, as well as one screw coming up from the bottom. Here, they cheaped out by taking a smaller 12ah battery, installed it sideways, then glued in a block of foam to take up the extra space. Knowing that these originally took an 18ah battery, I went ahead and ordered one.

[Battery from older Schumacher Power Station]

This is what one of the original 18ah batteries looks like. The dimensions are 7 1/16" wide x 6 9/16" tall x 2 15/16 " deep. As of 9/15/2024 I am no longer linking to the first replacement battery that I ordered. That particular battery leaked and I'm in the process of ordering a replacement from a different company.

Disassembly

To take it the rest of the way apart, there's a number of screws that need to be removed.

There's also a white connector that needs to be disconnected from the circuit board. After removing the connector I laid the back cover off to the side.

The part with the gray motor and purple wire is the tire pump assembly. It likes to fall down, from time to time. There isn't anything to hold it in place when the back cover is removed.

With the back cover out of the way, the next task is to remove the battery cables from the copper brackets.

With the battery cables removed, the battery slides right out the back.

With the battery out of the way, it's time to remove the foam.

Assembly

The replacement battery fits just fine. Since the battery is sealed, it's ok to have it laying on its side. In fact, that's how they used to be in older/similar versions of this power station.

The battery cables fit without having to make any changes to them.

From there, it was just a matter of putting everything back together. I didn't have to make any changes to the cover in order to get it to fit.

Last Update: 9-15-2024