Maintainer Cooking Batteries?

[ripcord]

The amount of current a maintainer is pushing is low enough that jumper cables are fine to connect two batteries

 

[JHZR2]

This is why many chargers either cutoff or pretty rapidly taper the charge voltage. Better to cut back with minimal undercharge, than all the baggage of what could go wrong to get that last 1-2% that doesn’t make a bit of difference for cranking/SLI.

 

[Donald]

Would like to see the electrolyte level, but I'll have to rip off the top label to do that. Incidentally, do jumper cables with alligator clips typically provide sufficient contact to connect batteries in parallel such they they can be maintained simultaneously? Just connect maintainer to either battery or to the alligator clips themselves?

Yeah - not sure I would start ripping labels off just to check the electrolyte level. The battery manufacturer made it in such a way that in normal use it will not need any water to be added over battery lifetime.

If your battery maintainer has an be SAE connector they they sell a "Y" connector to charge two batteries at once with each side fused. That is the proper was to charge two batteries at once.

I spent the money and have two BatteryMinder maintainers and one charger/maintainer.

 

[viscous]

UPDATE: Tried the maintainer on another battery that was reading 12.5V or 12.6V prior to connecting the maintainer. After a brief charge ramping up to 13.5V or 13.6 V, the maintainer settled in to approximately 13.25V "maintain" mode. This is the typical behavior I expect from this maintainer. Why was it charging the other pair at 14.2V? What's going on here?

 

[Rmay635703]

Sounds like a crappy or defective maintainer.

It looks like it was trying to equalize batteries which should be unnecessary on a maintainer.

 

[walterjay]

I have never been a fan of automatic battery maintainers. Too much risk. I use a small solar charger. The smallest one I could find. It works perfectly.

 

[Jetronic]

semi-smart chargers will not reduce voltage to maintainer mode until the current has dropped sufficiently low. I suppose that never happened with the huge capacity of 2 batteries in parallel