Trickle charger for starter battery

[my3kids]

I use one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

Each battery has one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-08 ... ery+tender

If you wanted to charge more than one battery at a time then you would need something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

or maybe one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

I also have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-08 ... ery+tender

And if I want to read the voltage while the battery is being charged up I use one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Equus-3721-Batter ... tage+gauge

My E350s are too tall to fit in the garage so they live on the driveway under a cheapie cover. Every week or two I charge the batteries. With non use I get the green light indicator after about 12-18 hrs. My underhood battery (a Walmart special) on my V10 takes longer to charge up and when I plug in a voltage reader I can see that its starting to get tired .. I will likely replace it sometime this year. (There is a recent thread on which group 65 battery to get.) Surprisingly, the 7 year old OEM Ford battery mounted on the frame rail charges to a green light quickly.

You do have to remember to charge up all the batteries but since I'm kind of methodical it isn't a problem for me. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps™,
Ray

[MadScience]

Does anything actually draw your house batteries down while you're sitting?

There's some draw that will pull my starting battery down over the course of three to five weeks of not driving. However my house battery seems to do fine just sitting for that amount of time and more.

I'm just connecting a battery tender to the starting battery a day or two at a time at this point. I need to order and install a second harness on the van to make it a more permanent setup for the winter months. The other harness is hooked up to the house battery, since I use it on the road while connected to shore power or a generator.

[Magpie]

Awesome Ray! Thanks for the information and Happy Trails!

[my3kids]

You're welcome. The Battery Tender can be left plugged in and continuously conditioning your battery during long periods of non use. However a buddy had something similar (although I don't think it was specifically a Battery Tender) on his porsche that he leaves at his weekend getaway. (I know, rough life.) Anyways, something went wrong and the battery got super hot then exploded (boiled over?). Battery acid all over the inside the trunk area of his shiny porsche. He wasn't happy.

Because I'm the paranoid type I never leave mine plugged in indefinitely (only a day or two at a time) and I never leave the unit sitting on something that is flammable such as the carpet.

Ray

[Gnarvan]

If you were looking for a perminent and easy solution I would consider mounting the charger under the hood somewhere and hard wiring it to the battery. You could hang the plug for the charger out under the front grill somewhere just like the block heater plugs on a diesel.

Check with someone smarter than I am to make sure the charger being hard wired to the battery doesn't create a draw on the battery when it's not plugged in to 110V power.

My '72 Toyota FJ-40 was set up that way when I bought it.

[Dango]

Originally Posted by MadScience

Does anything actually draw your house batteries down while you're sitting?

There's some draw that will pull my starting battery down over the course of three to five weeks of not driving. However my house battery seems to do fine just sitting for that amount of time and more.

I'm just connecting a battery tender to the starting battery a day or two at a time at this point. I need to order and install a second harness on the van to make it a more permanent setup for the winter months. The other harness is hooked up to the house battery, since I use it on the road while connected to shore power or a generator.

Not with one of these: http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/parts/rv-c ... 5-9025.htm

I had starting problems after extended stays...once in the boonies. I throw this switch every time I camp now. Drawbacks: no elec door lock convenience, no alarm, no cab lights. Pro: no more dead bat. Had to, of course, wire the stereo to the house bats.

[daveb]

I avoid high amp charging and using that type charger (no matter what it’s called) unless needed. There is no such thing as a smart charger. Any high amp “smart” charger can be tricked into applying a high amp charge when the batteries don’t need it. So it comes back to monitoring the charge. Both my solar and inverter has been set to charge AGM batteries and have switch to AGM type starting batteries. I was loosing my starting batteries on an almost annual basis until I made the switch to all AGM's but can't trust that mismatched batteries were actually the problem. There is a lot of info out there that states how to charge and configure your system the correct way but have found some of this info applies and some doesn't.

If I had to put my van in storage I’d be thinking of several issues:
>>>If I didn't have solar I would use a maintenance charger that put out no more than about an amp so there would be no chance of over charge and preferably the charger would be designed to charge AGM batteries.

>>>If I had wet cell starting batteries I would definitely manually keep the separator locked open and have another low amp charger that deals with that type battery.

>>>If worried something would be left on to pull the batteries down, a battery terminal disconnect might be a good choice on the house side. The starting batteries might be another issue.

>>>You still need to look at the battery or battery banks State Of Charge on a regular basis just in case.

Myself I’m more worried about over charge because I have solar and it takes care of my maintenance. My battery level sits at 12.8 just before the sun comes up provided the shore power is plugged in to supply AC to the refrigerator when it’s running. The battery separator never opens during the night because of this. I have enough solar (270 watts) to keep things up even in fog or overcast when the van sits. If one of the battery banks goes south, I rely on my battery separator to protect the other. If one of the batteries in a single bank goes bad hopefully I’ll catch it before it kills the other. I still kick on my high amp smart multi stage charger on a regular basis and let it do its thing. I mean how careful can you be?
JMO

[my3kids]

Totally agree. The one I use puts out .75 amps. A lot lower than the next model up. Even then I'm still paranoid enough to not plug it in indefinitely.

I have the (super costly) convenience of living very close to that fruit company so I don't drive that much that far. That's the main reason why I keep the batteries trickled up routinely.

Ray

[vlamgat]

Originally Posted by my3kids

I use one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

Each battery has one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-08 ... ery+tender

If you wanted to charge more than one battery at a time then you would need something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

or maybe one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-02 ... ery+tender

I also have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-08 ... ery+tender

And if I want to read the voltage while the battery is being charged up I use one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Equus-3721-Batter ... tage+gauge

My E350s are too tall to fit in the garage so they live on the driveway under a cheapie cover. Every week or two I charge the batteries. With non use I get the green light indicator after about 12-18 hrs. My underhood battery (a Walmart special) on my V10 takes longer to charge up and when I plug in a voltage reader I can see that its starting to get tired .. I will likely replace it sometime this year. (There is a recent thread on which group 65 battery to get.) Surprisingly, the 7 year old OEM Ford battery mounted on the frame rail charges to a green light quickly.

You do have to remember to charge up all the batteries but since I'm kind of methodical it isn't a problem for me. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps™,
Ray

So I do broadly as you but with a couple of differences which from experience I have found to be important:
The house battery (8D) needs something more than the Battery tender Plus can manage unless you pull the fuse. There are some residual draws that overwhelm its maintenance capacity forcing it to remain pretty well permanently on charge. So I use one of the C-Tek models that has an AGM setting that raises the charge voltage to 14.6v (I believe) or certainly something higher than the 13.6-13.9 I was seeing from the BT+. This gets it to a full charge state despite the residuals.

[daveb]

I'm sure each manufacture has its own recommendations but the folks at lifeline told me the float level voltage should be in the low to mid 13 volt region. For this reason they suggested to make sure my solar controller is adjusted to about 13.3. I know there are several chargers the do all sorts of special stuff but I still don't know if that's some kind of gimmick. I just try to charge as closely as Lifeline says. There is a formula for the charger size for the battery or battery bank size. I don't remember what it was. My twin 4-D's don't need much over an amp. I'm sure it also depends on the batteries condition.
Gel-batteries are the real finicky ones.