by WoodenBoat » 31 Oct 2017, 22:51
OMG, it's been so long since I was here. I feel terrible that I'd walked away and this forum completely slipped my mind. Really sorry about that.
Anyway I have intended to gather the information asked for in previous posts in this thread and so, I'm doing it now. But I feel I should mention some of the back story as to how I ended up having a rather eclectic collection of chairs.
I live in Clarksville, TN. here in the U.S. This is home to Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne. We have a lot of war-wounded soldiers here and also many disabled retired veterans. A very large percentage of Clarksville's population is made up of retired soldiers who have liked the area so much that they just stayed rather than moving back to where they originally grew up. The insurance benefits that these guys can tap into are amazing and often times, power chairs are included without charge to the soldiers who have given so much to this nation. Periodically, the Veteran's Administration will update chairs simply because they feel it's time for a soldier to have a new one. Then the old one gets shoved into a basement or garage and sits until given away.
When my parents advanced into their late years, they became more and more frail and weak. They've lived here in Clarksville for decades and have made many great friends. So, as they have gotten older and weaker, good friends have appeared out of the wood work and offered chairs. Invariably, a chair would only have one problem - dead batteries. My father was trying to get around the university campus one day and took a bad fall. A day later, some of our best friends showed up at the door with a power chair and cured that problem. Then my mother had her stroke and the insurance bought her a chair. Then another ex-soldier friend of ours came by to visit one day and he had with him another chair and asked if we needed it. I told my folks that I would fix the chair and we would pay this generosity forward somehow. I felt that, if we didn't accept the chair, it might end up in the landfill or something.
In the time since then, we've managed to collect four chairs and a scooter. Here is a list of what we have:
Pride Mobility Jazzy Elite ES
Pride Mobility Jet 3 Ultra
Pride Mobility Jazzy 1120
Shoprider 6Runner 14
Golden Companion GC440
All the chairs are in VG working condition. The Golden Companion scooter has drive train problems that I have not yet sorted out. The Jazzy 1120 is the biggest and baddest of the bunch with the Shoprider running a close second.
We have had the Jet 3 the longest. It needed new batteries when we got it and we bought the correct ones at the local Batteries Plus store. But I can't say that I've been particularly impressed with the life of these batteries. Batteries Plus charged me nearly $300 for the two batteries (a pair of UB12350s) and I needed to turn in the old ones or pay a core charge. I felt like they must have seen me coming. LOL Now it's time to replace these as they can barely move the chair from the living room to the kitchen without dumping.
So, when the Jazzy Elite batteries went south, I bought two new batteries from Amazon.com and didn't have to pay a core charge. Also, this chair called for a matching pair of UB12350s. They cost me a shade over $120 and I thought this was GREAT. So far, they seem to be giving good service - especially given the price.
Recently, we acquired the Shoprider chair and it calls for UB12500 batteries. We have been very strapped for money but my mom has been uncomfortable in the Jazzy Elite. So I put the UB12350s from the Jazzy into the Shoprider chair even though they were too small to fill the battery area. I wedged in peices of cardboard and styrofoam to keep them from wiggling around. This is a chair that seems to have been built with a morbidly obese person in mind as it is rated for up to a 450lbs rider. My mother is nowhere near this weight. She's around 140lbs. But she is finding this chair to be SO comfortable that she doesn't want to live without it. She asked me if there would be a problem using batteries that were too small for the chair. I don't claim to be any sort of battery expert but I told her that, to the best of my knowledge, it would simply mean that we might not get the range the proper batteries would deliver. So far, we've been happy at how much range we're getting. The batteries are very new though. Time will tell.
As an unexpected surprise, I found that I can sell the old batteries for the scrap value of the lead inside. A UB12350 brings $3.50 locally but I found a local auto parts store that would give me $10 in store credit if I wanted. I decided to take the store credit and sold all my scrap UB12350s and ended up with $60 on a gift card. YAY!
The old UB12500s in the Shoprider brought $10 cash each because they are large enough to count as automobile batteries. The Jazzy 1120 batteries were 80AH AGMs and they also brought $10 each cash.
So, as you folks can all see, I'm learning about this stuff really quickly.