Battery winter storage
What is the current thinking on engine battery winter storage? We have a new battery and a battery tender under the hood of the Ford V10. Best to disconnect and store or keep he tender monitoring/cha...
Forum Discussion
Gene_M wrote:
Have not read all of the previous posts, just wanted to contribute a little here.
I have BatteryTenders on my tractor, motorcycle and the car I keep in the garage, they are always connected and charging when the vehicles are not in use. I have 7 years on the car and 8 on the MC and 11 on the tractor batteries.
Since the regular mode of the IOTA DLS-55 is to trickle charge there is the element of losing water due to charge boil, best not to leave it on a stock house charger. I am installing an IQ4 (smart charger add on from IOTA) on the DLS-55 converter/charger for the house battery and I intend to leave that plugged into shore power same as the others. Since I am new to RVing I'm not sure if the DLS-55 charges the chassis battery when the vehicle is not running, so unsure of that for the moment.
Other info, I just purchased a BatteryMINDer 1510 because it has a desulfate step that BatteryTenders do not.
Unless your RV has a Trik-L-Start or similar device your chassis battery is not being charged when charging the house batteries.
One needs to be careful when selecting battery maintainers. Some of them will actually put a load on the battery if the AC power is removed so one must be careful about it coming unplugged or other AC power loss. I discovered that some versions of the BatteryMINDer were like this when I was researching them.
