Clicking sound with trickle charger

Sam Spade wrote:

jjson775 wrote:
so I started using the trickle charger.

I hope others benefited from this lively discussion.

Apparently YOU haven't.....because you are still talking about a "trickle charger" which can actually be harmful over long periods of time; sometimes even more than just letting them sit.

YOU NEED A SMALL, SMART, AUTOMATIC TENDER TYPE CHARGER......not something that is properly labeled as a trickle charger.

AND......3 week is NOT a long period of time for it to just sit without attention. If the battery shows a significant amount of discharge during that time then there is something wrong that needs to be located and fixed. OR you just simply need to disconnect the battery. Over a period as short as 3 weeks, a charger is NOT NEEDED. It just is not....or maybe more properly, it should not be.

Given the right kind of charger it won't hurt anything though and if it has a reasonable charge to start with it should not be necessary to disconnect the battery. IF....you have a parasitic loss that is more than a small battery tender can keep up with, you have a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Telling people otherwise is not doing them any favors.

Sam, the separator takes more power than a smart tender will put out, so that is all done, just like Pleasure-way said.

There is no voltage rule for generic named trickle chargers, so they can be good or bad. yes, tenders are better, IF you need them.

3 weeks is very typical for a modern vehicle to have a low battery from parasitic losses, not unusual at all. Also as Pleasure-way said.

He doesn't need any tender if he has a separator and a smart charger.

You talk of using unreliable rules of thumb, but nobody is doing that here, except.....