Using a battery maintainer
I'm going to store my Ram diesel truck for about 5 months and want to keep the batteries charged with a battery maintainer. Will I need to disconnect the batteries to do this?
ryoung
ryoung
Forum Discussion
- no this way the clock and the computer will be running which is not a bad thing
- Slap it on and plug it in.
- I put mine on a timer for 8 to 10 hours a day.(coldest hours of the day) It doesn't need to be on 24/7. Done this for 13 years with my truck and no problems.
- Do not use a GFI outlet. I did this on a car for 6 months and some time during the 5 months the GFI tripped possibly due to a power surg.
The maintainer dropped the battery voltage to about 3 volts which destroyed the battery.. - Peek A Boo spurious loads are about the only thing that can upset the apple cart. That, and as mentioned above -- extended power outages in conjunction with tiny loads that should not be there, anyway.
MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Peek A Boo spurious loads are about the only thing that can upset the apple cart. That, and as mentioned above -- extended power outages in conjunction with tiny loads that should not be there, anyway.
Not sure what you mean about tiny loads that should not be there. The maintainer that I had was the load that run the battery down.
Some maintainers put a small load on the battery even when they do not have a power input.- I have a collection of Battery Tenders. The 3 amp units do a great job on my CTD and single battery cars. I don't disconnect anything on the vehicles because the 3 amp units provide way more than the parasitic loads. Craig
RCMAN46 wrote:
Do not use a GFI outlet. I did this on a car for 6 months and some time during the 5 months the GFI tripped possibly due to a power surg.
The maintainer dropped the battery voltage to about 3 volts which destroyed the battery..
I don't think the maintainer drained the battery. More likely, it was the onboard loads in the truck (radio memory, etc.) that drained it. Chargers have blocking diodes that prevent reverse current flow.- I've used different maintainers on different vehicles. My advice is to check the battery once a day or so for the first few weeks.
Some vehicles have resting loads that are larger than the output of some trickle chargers. So you have to make sure the charger you have is working on the vehicle you have.
And yes, if the resting load is too high you can deal with that by disconnecting the ground. But you won't necessarily have to. - No need to disconnect. the voltages put out by the battery tender are not far removed from teh alternator. May actually be lower
