ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Battery Chargers

My answer would have to be both Joe. The link that Sawdust put up gave me some good ideas. Found one on there that would fast charge and trickle charge on three banks, it's almost $500.00 but I guess you get what you pay for. Thanks for all the great advice everyone.

I have a $120 smart charger I used for charging up model airplane batteries. It intelligently plots the voltage curve on batteries, and thus can fast charge at a VERY high rate but still detect when they're fully charged, and automatically switch to a trickle charge. I can charge a Nimh from fully drained in as little as 15 minutes, and nicd even faster

I tell you what, those suckers get HOT if you overcharge them.


[This message has been edited by SteveFehr (edited 01-07-2007).]

I think electure has the beginings of a great idea - paralel it to your truck battery - always charged and only when you drive it around town...

For my car, I use a Wal-Mart 1.5amp battery charger/maintainer. I use the cigarette lighter socket to make the connection to the battery--I wired it to a cigarette lighter plug.

I think that's much safer (and easier) than making a connection directly to the battery.

Of course, this will only work if the car has a cigarette lighter that is live when the key is off..and do boats even have cigarette lighter sockets?

If it's a good battery, one of those cheap solar battery maintainer thingy's from the junque chinese tool store fills the bill. I've used those before. All you need a window next to the battery.

TW

I know that boats and airplanes are holes into which you pour all of your money but...
I would consider many other solutions before spending 500 bucks to charge my boat batteries. One thing I might consider is using an automotive charger that I already owned, powered through an appliance timer. But my charger wouldn't go directly to the batteries. It would go to a distribution board with diodes and fuses for each battery. The anodes of 3 diodes would be connected to the trickle charge source and serve as blocking diodes while the cycle charger is energized. The cycle charger's output would also route through blocking diodes to the individual fuses. I would pull the fuse for a battery that wouldn't get connected. There are many other possibilities.
Joe