A while back someone mentioned some sort of trickle charger that can be left on for indefinite periods of time. Float Chargers ??? or something like that ??
I have two batteries in my boat and need something like this to keep the batteries up to snuff when I store the boat...........Anyone have some info ??..............Bruce
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@aircooled posted:A while back someone mentioned some sort of trickle charger that can be left on for indefinite periods of time. Float Chargers ??? or something like that ??
I have two batteries in my boat and need something like this to keep the batteries up to snuff when I store the boat...........Anyone have some info ??..............Bruce
If your boat batteries are conventional lead acid(I'm assuming deep cycle?), Harbor Freight sells a little float trickler for $20, sometimes on sale for less. I have I think 4 of them. One for the Spyder, one for my former motorcycle, lawnmower, and Cayman.
They come with a plug pigtail with ring terminals. Buy two, install and rest easy.
If you have an AGM(which is still lead acid) they're fine for that also.
But if you have LiFe or LiPo you need a different charger/maintainer.
This thread should be moved to tech general, so anyone can find it.
I just put one of these on my emergency generator battery after the last battery died.
It's more of a "maintainer" at 1 amp, but that's all I need for a generator. I got mine at Walmart on the way home from the battery store.
I have a battery tender hooked to mine. Plug shows green light when fully charged
I really like the CTEK units they can recondition a battery as well MUS-4.8 is my old unit I leave the thing plugged in all the time for my Optima battery, and yes I have a connector wired in so I can plug it in easily at will. I have a few others for my snowblower and my motorbike that are generic conditioner units.
Note that a trickle charger and a float charger are not the same thing.
A trickle charger puts out a small amount of charge for as long as it's connected. It doesn't care if your battery is at 3 volts or 13.5 volts, it just keeps sending it's charge voltage. Eventually it will boil a battery dry by overcharging it.
A float charger measure your battery's voltage and charges when it drops below a certain point and stops charging when it gets to the desired voltage. This slight charge discharge cycle helps keep the battery healthy and sometimes can even help rehab an iffy battery. In theory it can be left on the battery indefinitely and the battery will remain viable.
Last thought. It's really tempting to get something cheap, like a bargain basement trickle charger, assuming that we're going to go out there and do the float function manually. Works great until we forget, or the cheap thing burns down our garage. Get a good quakity trickle charger if you're going to do this, especially if you aren't going to be around the battery in question for extended periods. CTEK units, Battery Tenders, and the like are what you're after if you're looking for a fresh battery without the potential ash pile. The Harbor Freight one Danny uses may be one of those gems that HF occasionally produces.
Speaking of… I just bought a HF tire bead-breaker last night. I have no idea how I lived this long without one. It’s a fantastic bit of kit, and allows me to change TPMS sensors around rim to rim (don’t ask why, just trust me that it’s a thing just now) or even wrestle tires off (if I’m feeling manly) with spoons.
Like EMPI, HF often gets a bad rap. But they absolutely have a place in a fully equipped shop. Not for everything, but a lot more than we give them credit for.
Which one did you buy, @Stan Galat?
@JMM (Michael) is exactly correct. The really cheap ones will eventually boil your battery dry.
This issue gets down to how "cheap" each of us think "cheap" is. Used to mean $5 to me, but today with inflation it's more like $20 is cheap...
Cool, Stan, about the bead breaker. I need to change tires(flip them on the rim) several times during the season. I'm buying a modern rim-clamp machine from China, one of these days soon, probably this winter. A season of paying for tire flip and balance at the track will MORE than pay for it.
And HF tools absolutely have a place. Maybe not in a commercial shop, but certainly for home use. Like EMPI, the quality has drastically improved.
Last summer I bought their 5 drawer mechanics box. I also bought the Quinn mechanics tool set. Every socket and bit you can imagine. Good quality ratchets and chrome plating. Metric AND Standard ratchet box wrenches. Screwdrivers. Hex keys. Better quality than Kobalt or latter-day Craftsman, but not Snap-On for sure.
I added some socket and wrench organizers and a plier set. I spent about $800 on that and $150 on a Porter Cable 1/2" electric impact gun. Not bad for a complete trackside tool set. Everyone comes over and uses my stuff, because it's so easy to select the right tool.
Pictures ?
Bruce, I've used this one for years on all my vehicles.
Up until recently, I used one of these for "the car at the other end" of our Snowbird treks as well as the Speedster:
https://www.amazon.com/Schumac...52e9038fcc4&th=1
I had an extra one when we downsized houses so that's now keeping Chris' 996 battery happy all winter. I don't know what he has for a battery in that, but I'm running an Odyssey sealed AGM battery and it loves the Schumacher maintainer.
So I guess the moral of the story is, there are a lot of battery maintainers out there. Just look up what your batteries are (composition) and get a maintainer in the 1amp - 2amp range. Some of the maintainers can support multiple batteries so one charger for dual batteries. I know one of the larger NOCO maintainers can handle four batteries.
@aircooled What kind of boat is it?
This is a very good thread for me as my new toy is a 4-wheeled HAL-9000 and who knows how much juice it runs when it's parked and since I rarely drive it during the week, it's parked a lot. The battery in it is huge, and I don't want to replace it prematurely, so I need some sort of tender on it. Are the Battery Tenders mentioned earlier in this thread float chargers? That sounds like what I need.
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This is one of those subjects that tends to accumulate folklore and those of us who are not electrical engineers must rely on that to make our best guesses at what to buy.
I've had excellent luck with batteries over the years by doing that and here's what I've decided to believe.
First, I think @JMM (Michael) is right. Most of the folklore emphasizes this difference between trickle and float chargers, so that's the advice I've followed.
I just sold a sailboat I had for about 18 years. About 98% of the time, it sat in a marina in very cold salt water. It had two plain old 12V car batteries (a starter battery and a 'house' battery) that I had not a single day's trouble with in 18 years. (I changed out the batteries every seven or eight years or so.)
The previous owners had installed one of the first generation of 'smart' chargers which were quite a bit more expensive than simple trickle chargers back then. They monitored the batteries' state of charge and went through a programmed charge cycle until the batteries were all the way up. They adjusted the rate of charge towards the end of the cycle, then shut down. The cycle started automatically every two weeks.
Cold marine diesels can be notoriously hard to start when they've been sitting unused for long periods, but that engine started right up every single time I tried over those 18 years. I can't remember the name of the charger company (West Marine also sold them under their house brand), but that's probably not important. The take away is that programmed charging is a thing.
When I got the Speedy, all the smart kids were getting CTEK chargers for their fancy cars that never got driven in the winter. So, also wanting to appear smart, I got one too. The one I got is this , but they come out with 'new, improved' models every 20 days or so, so it probably doesn't matter too much exactly which one you get. Read all the ad copy, make your best guess, and you'll probably be fine.
This seems to do what that old smart charger on my boat did. It does a series of load tests, figures out what charge cycle to do, does that, and then shuts down. The shutting down part seems to be important, as the folklore all warns of the evils of a constant, unsmart, trickle charge.
It turns out I drive the Speedy enough right through most winters not to need the CTEK at all, but the few times I have hooked it up, it did its thing just swell. I've also used it on a modern MINI Cooper with delicate, computer-controlled everything and all of the MINI's electrons seem perfectly OK with the CTEK, too.
So, there's one man's circumstantial evidence and uneducated opinion.
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Well that works … I do think that most low end unit sold by HF, PA or others are becoming more robust at least more intelligent maybe more so than the users now and the end user doesn’t have to think about how to use it especially in the cold north where the season is barely 4 months. I write this with snow already on the ground and the salt truck having passed for at least a week now so we need to disconnect the batteries and or keep a conditioner on them. Speaking of batteries an E-Car blew up on fire just last week in someone that I knows condo complex … got to love the new tech. 
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I notice there are now smart charger models specifically dedicated to lithium batteries.
Probably the same chargers, but with heavier duty manufacturer liability insurance.
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@Sacto Mitch posted:.
I notice there are now smart charger models specifically dedicated to lithium batteries.
Probably the same chargers, but with heavier duty manufacturer liability insurance.
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I recently bought this charger from Amazon. It does LiPo, LiFe, and conventional or AGM Lead Acid. Plus has a conditioner circuit and charges up to 20 amps(selectable). For $60 plus(I think it was $53 when I bought it) it works for me.
I also picked up XT60 connectors and made up my own pigtails for the Vee and the trailer LiFe battery.
This has been hooked up constantly for 15 years without fail. $50 now.
So, @Lane Anderson - - - -
You cornfused yet? 😉
@Sacto Mitch posted:I've also used it on a modern MINI Cooper with delicate, computer-controlled everything and all of the MINI's electrons seem perfectly OK with the CTEK, too.
Here's another "don't be like stupid-Stan" story.
One of my mother's greatest joys ("bless her heart") lies in being a martyr. Her stories of self-denial and hardscrabble upbringing are legendary in the family. She did have some really tough breaks as a kid (her mom died when she was 9), but her life has been pretty cushy for decades. In one of her 5 or 6 "go-to" stories, told for the entirety of my 60 years, Mom talks about how from the earliest day of her childhood, she had always wanted a red convertible - but her sensible upbringing and early start at adulthood (married at 19, I came along at 20) left her with yet another dream unfulfilled ("Oh well, it's probably for the best... sigh"). For reference, Mom couldn't spend what Dad made and left her in 2 additional lifetimes.
Anyhow, in 2010 or so, Precision Mechanical Services was firing on all cylinders, and mid-90s Mercedes SLKs with retractable hardtops could be had for under $10K. I would like the record to state that I'm not a red car fan (at all) - but that I located and procured a blazin' red gen-u-whine Mercedes-Benz SLK for Mom, in an effort to prove that I might be a son she could be proud of, sure... but at least in part just to see how Mom would react to being down one good martyr story, leaving her with the 4 or 5 remaining.
She was overwhelmed. Mom is one of those women of a certain age who struggle to express real happiness or heartfelt gratitude, and she was struggling. She fussed and fretted about what her church-lady friends would say - but she really was happy. Dad just dove in and drove "Mom's" car like he stole it (which I guess he did, in a way). He hauled her all over the country in that car. He also put it into a guardrail and had a "discount bodyman" fix it, but together Mom and Pop used the car until Dad got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015. They parked it and never drove it again.
Dad fought hard, but died 2-1/2 years later. About a year after his diagnosis, I bought the 2 BR ranch next to the house we were building in the middle of Morton. Dad and I spent every day for over a year working together to gut and completely remodel the house for mom to live in after Dad was gone. It was one of the sweetest years of my life. After Dad died, I got Mom and Dad's place ready to sell, and finished the remodel.
Part of getting the house ready was rat-holing the SLK somewhere. I didn't have the heart to sell "Mom's" (Dad's) car, so I rented some covered space, drove the car down, parked it and disconnected the battery.
... which brings me (finally) to the point of this long and boring tale.
A couple of years ago, Mom said, "I think it's time to sell the convertible". I hemmed and hawed and deflected and told her she'd drive it again someday, but she won't. Since Dad died, Mom has broken down rapidly and pretty completely. She's still living next door, but I don't see how it'll be possible for her to live alone in 5 years.
Eventually I relented. I took the rollback trailer down to the storage place, dragged the car out, and winched it on the trailer. I brought it back to Stanistan, and connected my super-duper 200a jumpstarter charger to the car. I had the charger on the highest 12v setting, and went in the house. A couple hours later, I went to the trailer, hopped in the car, and started the SLK (still sitting on the trailer).
It was (understandably) running a bit rough with 5+ year old gas and a battery at least 10 years old. I disconnected the charger, backed it off the trailer, and onto the drive
I left it running, while I began pressurewashing 3+ years of grime and pigeon poop off the car. There had been evidence of rodents in the engine bay, and I made the first of two giant mistakes. I decided to pressurewash under the hood.
And there I was, merrily spraying away, engine idling roughly, when I sprayed something I shouldn't have, and the car died.
I'm not sure what happened to me at that point, but I did something colossally stupid. If I'd have been less emotionally invested, or had slept in a Holiday Inn Express the night before, or perhaps had not eaten those psychedelic mushrooms, I'd have just gone to Walmart for a new battery. I (sadly, however) did not. I plead temporary insanity for what I did do. I connected the big-honkin' "jumpstart charger" and set the phaser to "kill". I powered that baby up, the amp needle buried to the right, and the car cranked over like I was applying 24v to a 12v system
... which I was. For those of you who weren't raised getting long-slumbering 1960s vintage grain-trucks started in the fall - these super-chargers get their "200a jump-start" setting by jumping the transformer up to 24v and letting the battery act as a damper to keep from frying the points and capacitors and coils they're meant to scare to life.
A mid-90s Mercedes SLK is no 'murican grain truck - it is a highly evolved and quite dainty post-modern device with something like 14 different German ECUs all doing their German ECU things. None of these ECUs (it turns out) are designed to handle 24v. I almost immediately realized what I had done, and quickly turned the charger back to its highest 12v setting. But once a bell is rung, it cannot be unrung. The smoke, as they say, was out of the box.
On the positive side, I didn't see any smoke or smell anything burning. However, the car did not start. It did not try to start. It didn't cough like it might start. The dash lit up like a Christmas Tree. Deep from somewhere under the dash, I started hearing a driver clicking on and off and on and off over and over. Odd combinations of lights and fans were lit or running (and could not be shut off).
I disconnected the battery and closed the hood. I called a friend from town who is something of a German car savant and asked if he wanted to take a look at it. I ended up selling him the car for $1500, and I think he gave that to me out of pity for my poor, poor mother. I believe the toll was 4 ECU boards, one of which was something of a masterbrain for the whole thing, and was buried deep in the bowels of the dash. It took him a month of nights to get it back on the road.
Get the right charger.
@Gordon Nichols posted:So, @Lane Anderson - - - -
You cornfused yet? 😉
When am I not confused? 
Oh man. There's gotta be a ballad in there. Let's see:
"Martyr"..."starter"..."smarter"..."out-parter"...
anybody go ahead jump in any time...
Wow, that's quite a story, Stan. I feel your pain.
Another great story out of Stanistan. I'm thinking there's a book in that boy just waiting for him to put the freon down.
Or, as Ed suggested, an album or two of country western songs.
@ALB posted:Which one did you buy, @Stan Galat?
This one. I joined "The Inside Track" for $30 to get $40 off. this little thing is amazing. I broke down 7 tires today and moved 3 of them rim to rim. I think I'm a $75 bubble-balancer away from not needing my tire-shop for work truck tires any more.
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Oh Lord, don’t you fry me
My Mercedes Benz
I crossed up the wires
I must make amends
I worked hard all my lifetime
No help from my friends
Oh Lord, don’t you fry me
My Mercedes Benz
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me
A new ECU
I’m fresh out of dollars
Don’t know what to do
The lights on the dashboard
Red, green, and blue
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me
A new ECU
I worked hard all my lifetime
No help from my friends
Oh Lord, don’t you fry me
My Mercedes Benz
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And this thread is a perfect example of why I enjoy this forum. Thanks, Mitch, I wasn't even thinking about a blues album, but you changed my mind.
Stan, I’m on my 3rd Benz now (all ‘99-‘03) and they don’t even like to be jump started. They guy at the local indie shop told me that if the brains aren’t reading a perfect 12.5-12.75V when the key hits Pos1, it discombobulates the whole process. I don’t even attempt it anymore. If it doesn’t start, first try, I just pull the battery and charge it. (Have to pull it. No AC in my parking lot.
As for chargers, I have a collection of Battery Tenders and Tender+. I got a little wary of them after Ed the Bosch distributor guy told me one went haywire and toasted the 12V conversion in his 356 notchback. (Burnt the battery up, natch. But on top of that, it did something to something else and he could never suss it out. It would work fine for weeks, then discharge over night. Or refuse to start after 10 minutes of driving. He finally got so frustrated, he put all the 6V stuff back in and sold it)
What I do now with the Spyder battery is put it on the Tender+ for a day or two at a time, every 2-3 weeks. Same with my Ducati.
I bought a little Lithium Ion battery for another bike and consequently needed a charger* for it. I bought an Energizer charger/maintainer from Batteries+. It has 2\ea charge cycles for 6V and 12V, a Lithium cycle, and a restore cycle that’s worth the entire price. I’ve rescued 3 batteries that Batteries+ said were toast with that. (It basically does a charge, complete discharge, then recharge)
Same deal. I put it on a charge for 24 hours every 2-3 weeks. I also remove the batts from my summer vehicles and keep them in a styrofoam cooler in my storage unit to keep them from freezing.
And while we’re on the subject, I can’t speak highly enough of this. Zero Gravity sponsors the 924\944\968 Forum on the Rennlist and a year or so ago they had a holiday special on their boost packs. This was the third one I’d bought and the first one that works as advertised. The other two were great iPhone/iPad battery chargers, but miserable failure as booster boxes the Die Hard branded one would boost my Ducati, but never a car. I’ve been fighting a cheese ball under-sized, under powered crappy cheapo battery the shop put in my 968 after they left my dome light on and discharged my 2 year old Deka battery (battery’s dead, let charge him for a new one!)
It’s started the 968 up every time without fail. (I put it away for the winter today and I’ll get another 770CCA battery for it in the spring)
*As I understand it, Lithium batteries need a slower, deeper charge than a lead/acid battery. If you use a regular charger, it will charge too fast and shut off, never fully charging and developing a “memory” for a partial charge.
Then you will need this one.... but watch your ears.
https://www.harborfreight.com/...ad-seater-58814.html
I don't though - that's what's great about the tires I'm bouncing around - they're all 215/55R16 LT tires on 6-1/2" rims. The tires bunch up on the high part of the rim, and if you make sure everything is set right, I can air them up through the Schraders.
The downside is a 55 series tire doesn't have much sidewall. We've got 3 vans, and I've already bought 4 extra rims.
Starter Fluid is more fun.
" Starter fluid " My most spectacular prank....The shop crew came back from lunch.....Anthony went into the rest room & I jumped up on the work bench & shot a large starter fluid flame into the bathroom via the overhead AC duct. Anthony comes flying out the door with his work pants still below his knees yelling ..... F I R E !
