Harbor freight 1.5 solar battery maintainer

I have a couple of the 1.5 watt Harbor Freight solar battery “maintainers”. Each one is used on an old car (99 and 00 cirrus) that are rarely used. They work for this purpose.
I did clip the LED indicator though to maximize output. They were cheap with the coupon and I originally did not expect much but they do work.
Also have a 15 watt Battery Tender solar panel that I use occasionally. It did not have enough oomph to maintain 2 truck batteries but it works great for 1.

Harbor Freight, say no more m

I use my maintainer linked earlier inside the rig, so it is out of the rain. It comes with sets of wires you can either clamp on to a battery or else plug into a cig lighter socket. I have 120v inside and stick the wire set with the plug into the dash cig lighter. Confirmed outside with meter that the starter battery is at 13.4v.

OK, so with a solar maintainer out of the equation, here's another question. Battery Tender Jr, or Batteryminder Plus #12117 ? I like the Batteryminder Plus idea of also including a desulfation mode. These would be attached to the chassis battery mostly during the winter hibernation and left attached (Oct to April) I will have to figure out a way to weather proof them

KD4UPL wrote:

1.5 watts? That's an absurdly ridiculous do nothing piece of equipment.
1.5 amps? That's probably useful for barely maintaining a battery with no load on it.

I think 1.5 watts. Useful for maintaining one small chassis battery with no load on it, i.e. battery must be completely disconnected. Harmless, will maintain 13.x volt forever, without overcharging. Things like this are sold on Amazon for $20-25, brand doesn't matter, it's just a solar panel with night diode and wires.

In his climate in winter I would get 10-15W panel with controller.

Figure in picture is to be used on a forest fire. One point five watts is just as useless. And here I saw complaints about Ford chassis that had the chassis battery disconnected then needed to be towed to the dealer to have the code reset. My penlight key finder than uses a 2032 battery that consumes more than 1.5 watt.

1.5 what??
1.5 watts? That's an absurdly ridiculous do nothing piece of equipment.
1.5 amps? That's probably useful for barely maintaining a battery with no load on it.

This is where AGMs are nice. Disconnected they lose very little strength. I guess the nice picture means comparing it to a real gun.

I have three of these trickle chargers and they keep my battery up well in storage. I turn my disconnect switch off though, so there is no drain on the battery. I have two more, one on the riding mower and a boat battery. Works for me...

Read the nomenclature for a quality battery maintainer. Modern day vehicle computers have a slight bleed -- under or overwhelming a caveman constant current cheapo