Re: Battery life reduced by trickle charger?

Posted by Gary Schafer on March 01, 2007 at 18:28:26 from (75.74.131.91):

In Reply to: Battery life reduced by trickle charger? posted by Dom88 88 on March 01, 2007 at 13:40:23:

Yes a trickle charger will kill your batteries! As others have said what you want is a battery maintainer or float charger.

The best deal going are the little float chargers from harbor freight. They are at around $6.95 right now. The prices vary from around $4.50 to $12.00 depending on their sales. They put out a regulated voltage of 13.6 volts which is the voltage needed for float charging. (13.3-13.6 volts is the float range batteries require).
I have heard a few people complain about these chargers saying that they have melted down. The trick to using them is that you MUST have a fully charged battery when you connect these float chargers up. They will not put out enough power to charge a low battery and they WILL get very hot if you try to do so. Charge the battery with a regular charger first then hook up the float charger and you can leave it on for years at a time and it will keep the battery up and will not harm the battery or the float charger.

If you are going to store a battery for long periods (over the winter) with no float charger then be sure to clean the battery top well before leaving it. Any acid residue or dirt on the battery top will make a conductive path between the battery posts and it will discharge the battery. Best to wash the top with backing soda and water. Don’t get any backing soda into the cells or it will kill the battery.

Disconnecting one lead from the battery is a must on most cars as the electronics in most draw enough current to discharge the battery in 3 or 4 months. On a tractor you should not have that problem and usually don’t have to worry about disconnecting them.
However it is not a bad idea to disconnect one cable in case there is some leakage in the wiring. Another good reason to disconnect one lead is to help prevent fires! Some of these old tractors have some pretty bad, poorly maintained wiring that sometimes develops a short and starts a fire. A friend of mine that works on customers tractors says he always disconnects a battery cable when he gets a tractor in his shop as he has had a couple catch on fire because of poor wiring.

Best regards
Gary

Replies:

• Re: Battery life reduced by trickle charger? dan hill 02:19:42 03/02/07 (0)

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