But if you look at the wall wart it is rated for 12VDC, which is the same as car's 12-14V most likely, under load. Sure if you measure with voltmeter they are always around 18 but I'm sure it sags to closer to 12 under load, but I have not verified.
Yea every 4 months, charge! Draining is bad for lead acids. Your thinkin NICAD.
Always best to keep topped off sure
I still find it strange the car charger into the wall wart charging plug doesn't work.
Recently there were two threads running at the same time about the Stanley HID manual.
One has disappeared, maybe the moderators merged the two together to avoid confusion.
That is probably why the link no longer works to the other vanished post.
This wall charger is not your average charger.
The Stanley charging setup works differently to most charging situations.
The Stanley HID charger works at an output of 18V - 19V DC.
I have made a power supply that charges the torch via the normally capped plug at the rear of the torch.
There was a lot of different information and plenty of speculation about how the Stanley HID charging worked in the early days.
I could probably have used a 240V to 120V AC transformer to let me use the original wall charger but I went down a different road which gave me more of an insight into how the whole Stanley charging setup works.
I did this because I preferred making my own power supply and checking the charging rate out fully as in Australia we use 240V AC and the wall adaptor is not rated for that much input voltage.
My power supply is variable from 12V to 21V DC and from this I could tell what was happening with the charging Voltage and Amperage.
I have now set my power supply to 19V DC output and the torch charges perfectly similar to that of the original Stanley HID charger.
The torch charging rate is over 400ma from my power supply at a voltage of 18V - 19V DC.
There is no sag in voltage down to 12V as you have speculated.
Believe me, it has to have a solid 18V or so to make the charging circuit inside the torch work properly.
After the charging LED finishes flashing orange whilst charging, the internal torch charging circuit will cut the power from the wall adaptor completely and then the LED turns green.
I have written about this rather extensively in the thread below.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=288098
Send me a Private Message through CPF if you still need the manual.