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Old 07-09-2008, 08:35 AM   #1
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Charging an External 12v not-a-house-battery?

So if there is a motorcycle or trailer battery that I want to keep charged with the vehicle, can I just hook up + and - from the starter battery (or wherever gets 13.7v from the alternator) or do I have to put some charging management center in with the battery?

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Old 07-09-2008, 08:45 AM   #2
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Not knowing where you are storing this battery, why don't you make up a cable from a 12V outlet (house battery) and charge it through that?

Or you could use small jumper cables from the house battery to the 'extra' battery.

Then the battery will get charged from any source and never pull down the starting battery if something goes awry.

Another possibility would be if you have a towing package and you could use the 12V for the trailer to charge your external battery.

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Old 07-09-2008, 08:51 AM   #3
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But essentially hooking the external battery to a 12v source and driving around won't fry the battery and it will be charged when I disconnect it?
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Old 07-10-2008, 03:42 PM   #4
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I was told it's OK to use one of the 12 VDC outlets in back to charge a small battery but the deal is you never know when it's fully charged. You would need solar to reach the 14.2 or so to top the battery. That's fine if in sun and the controller is supplying that voltage. I just use a multi amp automatic charger set to the lower end. Plus I can use the charger to jump someones vehicle rather than hooking directly of my rig. But it's one more thing to carry and won't help while sitting at camp sucking up the reserve you need for nightime. Most electric trailer brakes use a battery like that for run away trailer brake lockup. Don't know if it shortens their life though.
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Old 07-11-2008, 01:17 PM   #5
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Anything you do to place your 'external' battery in parallel with the house batteries will charge them the same. The caution would be - if one battery is sick or bad, it will pull down the others. You electrical system doesn't know if you have one aux battery or two, or more. Or a 4D or two. It just sees low voltage and supplies a charge. Or is sees adequate voltage and stops supplying a charge.

If you have the Towing package, the outlet off the back should come from the starting batteries and be protected when the key is off.

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Old 07-21-2008, 10:24 AM   #6
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I don't know if this will work, but I was thinking of something like this for my boats.

http://www.stayncharge.com/products.htm
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