I have two cars and two trickle chargers. One battery is fairly new (2.5 years old) and one old (6 years). I typically get out once a week for a drive but now it's winter so I don't get out as often. For the older battery I keep the trickle charger on always, for the newer battery I'll pull the charger if I'm driving once a week. Is it safe to just always keep the trickle chargers attached no matter how often I drive?

 

I have three tractors that I pull the batteries for the winter months. They are on trickle chargers in the garage for several months. The batteries last a LOT longer that way..... These are smart chargers though, so, they won't overcharge the batteries.

 

Thanks, HeyYou! I am all about extending battery life and I only recently started using the charger on the old battery and I absolutely think it's extending the battery's life. So I'll do same for the newer battery.

 

You need to make sure you have float/maintenance/smart (terminology variations for same thing) which like mentioned, maintains voltage without overcharging, a plain oil trickle or 2amp charger will do this in time if its not designed to cycle accordingly

 

Thanks, Dodgetruck2! I pulled out an old Schumacher that does smart maintenance and bought a new Yonhan which does ditto. Both are working real well.

 

Update: For the Yonhan, from what I can tell, while it will do a trickle function, it does not go into that mode automatically - which is ridiculous. I'll search for another charger/maintainer.

What I've found (and maybe most people know this) is that most chargers/maintainers need to be manually put into trickle/maint. mode once the battery is full and some need a disconnect/reconnect to work. It seems the entire Schumacher line (from what I can tell) will change from full to maint. automatically. I already had on old 6amp with LED indicators and recently bought the 3amp SP1356 with digital indicators for intervention-free maintenance.

 

Definitely something to watch for, I have a Harley Davidson stickered one for my motor cycle it switches automatically, and it uses teh same 2 pin weether pack as all the other models so i can move it around as need, Ive also picked p a few 10-15$ ones from harvor freight that have worked well as well, I have a beefy Durastart or some brand i picked up at a pawn shop, its a decent sized brick, and it maintains automatically as well

 

Right - everyone's application is different. I might drive a car two, three days in a row but might not drive same car for several weeks. The Schumacher (or similar) allows the battery to be at 100% all of the time, extending battery life (so I'm told). Takes literally 20 seconds to hook it up and forget about it. But what I can't do is check on the battery charge level and then once at 100% manually change to trickle.

 

The cheap harbor fright fellers I have do it all automagically. They will charge the batter to full, then just apply voltage as needed. Work great. Been using them for five or six years now.

 

Somehow I forgot about those because we batted the product around here but I did not know that they went to trickle automatically - that's great info to note.