Not another 12V battery question!

Have you fully charged it......either before or after installation ?
That is an important step.

 

AAARRRGGGGHHHH

You should NOT be using an actual trickle charger for anything.
If it really is a smart tender type charger, you should NOT be calling it a "trickle charger" because it is NOT.
There is an important difference.
Please use the right terms. Please.

 

Trickle chargers never turn off the charging circuitry so they are fine to recharge a battery but will "cook" the battery if left on for days or weeks at a time.

Tenders/Maintainers are smart and sense the level of change and only begin charging again if the voltage drops. Thus they won't "cook" the battery.

I've used maintainers that required that a battery be at a minimum voltage before they would charge. So both types may be required. I have both.

I've used maintainers for more than 2 months continuously connected when my ICE car was in hibernation.

 

A technical quibble as the resul of uncooked battery is the same, but don't battery maintainers for lead-acids actually apply a continuous float charge on a fully charged battery that is just high enough to counteract self discharging.

Maintainer/trickle charger is an accurate label.

Lead-acid batteries are quite old. Old enough that a retail level, automatic chargers were considered a pipe dream. Back then, maintainers were dumb chargers only powerful enough to supply that float charge, which would not be enough to charge a battery if it was below full. Can you find a battery maintainer today that isn't capable of trickle charging? How about a dumb charger only powerful enough for trickle charging?

 

Yes, that is a typical "float" voltage to maintain a full charge without overcharging.

 

It is sad when an old respected company like B&D sells their name to others who produce junk.

 

Some apply a continuous float voltage and some shut off completely and monitor the voltage to sense a "need" to turn the charging on again.

Your concept of automatic chargers is a bit warped.
Seems like I remember them being available back in the ANCIENT 1970'S but not widely available.
They certainly came into common use when wet cell lead acid was the only game in town.

 

I seriously doubt that.
Most chargers never quite put out the total current that they are rated for.
And as the battery voltage rises, the current goes down.
Unless you really have a constant current charger......which would be expensive and not worth the money.

 

The 1970's is far from ancient. The first lead-acid batteries suitable for commercial use were developed in 1881. Those batteries all needed chargers.

Language is alive. It mutates, with words and sayings changing over time. Vanilla as an adjective has come mean something plain or basic, but before the invention of imitation vanilla, the real stuff was rare and exotic.

AWD and 4WD is like sun roof and moon roof; mostly marketing. But since spec listings for cars on the company website give less technical details about the systems than the car's transmission, people started developing technical definitions for the terms, because how these things actually work have an impact when it comes to specific uses. You don't asymetrical AWD with FWD bias when comes to rock crawling for example.

The motor and engine thing came about with technical discussions about hybrids. Outside of heavy technical writing for all subjects, people tend to go with easier intercourse. The two terms are basically synonyms, but when it comes to talking and typing about systems using a combustion and electric motor, we don't want to state which engine/motor we are referring to is combustion/electric repeatedly in a forum post, and some don't know what ICE means in that context. So have settled on how the terms are now used.

MIT School of Engineering | » What’s the difference between a motor and an engine?

 

The vanilla meaning comes from a saying; "plain vanilla". There are other sayings, like "government issue", that now mean the opposite of their original use.

Never heard the engine oil one. I think the bottle labels say motor oil.

 

I have never heard anyone complain about the use of the term "motor oil" either.
Anyone who does is just anal retentive, since there is almost nobody on the planet that would be in any way confused by that term.

HOWEVER...... The term "trickle charger" describes a very specific device. So does the term "battery tender".
And they are not the same or interchangeable.
And using the wrong term can and does cause confusion.

Unlike the "engine oil" example, there is an important distinction and using the wrong term is not helpful to anybody.

 

Yes, they are specific devices, but how many products available today are one or the other? I haven't come across a battery maintainer in a store that wasn't also a trickle charger. The trickle chargers that aren't also maintainers are a rate selection among faster charge ones. The charger I have will go into a maintenance mode well done charging, whether I choose 15 amp or 2.

 

I have a charger in my garage that does not turn off or reduce below enough output to cook a battery, I also had a maintainer that wouldn't output anything if the receiving battery wasn't at about 10.5v. So I'd use one for the afternoon and the other overnight.

So perhaps everyone is right and the lesson to be learned is read the specs on the charger/maintainer that you are intending to use.

 

You, and a lot of others it seems, are not understanding what the term really MEANS.

A real trickle charger is a simple transformer and a diode or two.
That's it. Cheap and dirty.

Typically the transformer open circuit output voltage is about 15.5 volts or more.
When connected to a fully charged battery, it drops down to about 14.5 and something MORE than the proper float current flows ALL THE TIME. That is not good for the battery.

NO device that is properly called a "battery maintainer" will do that.
NADA. NONE. ZIP.

A battery maintainer will either:
Stop charging completely and monitor the voltage to know when to start the charging again.
OR
Drop the voltage down to the proper value for "float charging", which is typically about 13.2 volts and a VERY small current flows or maybe none at all, depending on the battery design and it's health.

SO.....a smart battery maintainer is NOT a trickle charger.
And a trickle charger is NOT a smart battery maintainer.