• Steel Soldiers now has a few new forums, read more about it at: New Munitions Forums!

  • Microsoft MSN, Live, Hotmail, Outlook email users may not be receiving emails. We are working to resolve this issue. Please add support@steelsoldiers.com to your trusted contacts.

Pulse Battery Maintainers (was Pulse Charging)

Reworked LMTV

Reworked LMTV

Expedition Campers Limited, LLC
Supporting Vendor
1,506
1,174
113
Location
TN
Awesomeness said:
Me too, which is why I was trying to point out (perhaps not clearly enough) that you can get a good NOCO charger for about the same as the Chinese ones, if you look around.


"Designed and engineered in the USA. Over 100 years of American ingenuity and vision." They're a US company, though I'm sure at least parts of their stuff are manufactured in China (like everything electronic). https://no.co/about-us


If the battery is truly dead, no fancy charger is going to help that. If it has a dead cell, no fancy charger is going to help. There are a lot of problems it won't help. But if your battery has some mild sulfation problems and stuff, they can help reverse those, and then keep it maintained going forward.

The small NOCO chargers do just fine, they're just lower amperage (for the most part... there are some feature differences). For example, I use a little NOCO charger to tend my tractor battery over the winter, because it sits for 5-6 months getting below freezing every night. In 13 years since I bought the tractor new, I've only replaced the battery once, maybe 4 years ago. As I posted earlier, the batteries my LMTV came with lasted ~5 more years, by charging and maintaining with the NOCO Gen4.

The NOCO chargers are designed to be left plugged in. They automatically monitor the battery, charge when needed, desulfate when needed, etc., so that they keep the battery as maintained as possible.

I can't say other brands of "smart chargers" wouldn't work as good, but I'm definitely satisfied with NOCO.
Click to expand...
I believe someone on this forum had issues with NOCO. Don't recall what they were.
 
Third From Texas

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
Awesomeness said:
Where are you going with that? You think the Chinese chargers are likely better?
Click to expand...
Well there are always a percentage of bad reviews on Amazon.

But that's true with all electronics, really.

I'm not dissing NOCO I just want to try something cheap with a reasonable amp output that can be run while attended. NOCO's get a bit pricy in the 6-10a range.

I can coax the magic smoke out of anything, though.

;)
 
Awesomeness

Awesomeness

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
1,813
1,518
113
Location
Orlando, FL
Reworked LMTV said:
I was trying to recall what someone had said about them. There are plenty of threads on NOCO. https://www.steelsoldiers.com/threads/on-board-battery-charger.178958/#post-2133596
Click to expand...
I wonder what Simp thinks are "junk" about them? That's a pretty bold statement, with absolutely nothing said to support it. I know my experience with them has been very good, and I now have a handful of old chargers around collecting dust (that I should just get rid of). Even on Amazon, the NOCO stuff has 4.5+/5 ratings after many thousands of reviews. https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=noco+charger&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

The biggest complaint I have about my NOCO Gen4 is that the four mounting holes are tiny. It's like a 15lb charger, being held on my LMTV by four tiny screws... #4 I think. But it hasn't fallen off yet, and the new Gen4 replacement they just released has two mounting slots that are much larger.
 
Reworked LMTV

Reworked LMTV

Expedition Campers Limited, LLC
Supporting Vendor
1,506
1,174
113
Location
TN
Awesomeness said:
I wonder what Simp thinks are "junk" about them? That's a pretty bold statement, with absolutely nothing said to support it. I know my experience with them has been very good, and I now have a handful of old chargers around collecting dust (that I should just get rid of). Even on Amazon, the NOCO stuff has 4.5+/5 ratings after many thousands of reviews. https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=noco+charger&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

The biggest complaint I have about my NOCO Gen4 is that the four mounting holes are tiny. It's like a 15lb charger, being held on my LMTV by four tiny screws... #4 I think. But it hasn't fallen off yet, and the new Gen4 replacement they just released has two mounting slots that are much larger.
Click to expand...
Best to ask him.
 
Reworked LMTV

Reworked LMTV

Expedition Campers Limited, LLC
Supporting Vendor
1,506
1,174
113
Location
TN
Third From Texas said:
Well there are always a percentage of bad reviews on Amazon.

But that's true with all electronics, really.

I'm not dissing NOCO I just want to try something cheap with a reasonable amp output that can be run while attended. NOCO's get a bit pricy in the 6-10a range.

I can coax the magic smoke out of anything, though.

;)
Click to expand...
To save money, look for Amazon returns.
 
TechnoWeenie

TechnoWeenie

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
1,653
1,669
113
Location
Nova Laboratories, WA
Personally, I would feed 2 smaller solar panels into 2 charge controllers, one for each battery....Then it'd be practically maintenance-free with no requirement for 110v... But, that's just mission ready stuff, not bringing back dead/depleted batteries... Plus, you'd be able to tap off of one of the batteries with small loads without having to worry about an imbalance..

But a battery equalizer is another way to do it, for sure.
 
TechnoWeenie

TechnoWeenie

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
1,653
1,669
113
Location
Nova Laboratories, WA
Ronmar said:
You can get a basic 5A balancer for $25...
Click to expand...
Passive? So if you have a bad battery, it drags both of them down? ;) Unfortunately, that's how the passive balancers work. They will use the higher voltage battery to discharge into the lower voltage battery until the voltage is the same. If you have a failing battery with a dead cell, or sulfated plates, you end up with 2 dead batteries instead of just one questionable one... Worst case scenario, that is...

There's no perfect solution. It'll all depend on what your use case is... For most people, a simple 24V charger/maintainer is fine. I'm a little picky when it comes to electrical, so my solution would try to cover as many possibilities as possible, and in doing so, also make things complicated with more potential points of failure, heh.
 
R

Ronmar

Well-known member
3,845
7,474
113
Location
Port angeles wa
TechnoWeenie said:
Passive? So if you have a bad battery, it drags both of them down? ;) Unfortunately, that's how the passive balancers work. They will use the higher voltage battery to discharge into the lower voltage battery until the voltage is the same. If you have a failing battery with a dead cell, or sulfated plates, you end up with 2 dead batteries instead of just one questionable one... Worst case scenario, that is...

There's no perfect solution. It'll all depend on what your use case is... For most people, a simple 24V charger/maintainer is fine. I'm a little picky when it comes to electrical, so my solution would try to cover as many possibilities as possible, and in doing so, also make things complicated with more potential points of failure, heh.
Click to expand...
No it has a low volt cutoff..., but it would be used in conjunction with a charger/maintainer, so I doubt it would ever trip unless one battery gets so bad that it absorbs all the power provided by the charger/within the limits of the equalizer... Now if you are so inattentive as to not catch it before it gets to that stage, perhaps you shouldn’t own things with power systems in them:)
 
Third From Texas

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
TechnoWeenie said:
Personally, I would feed 2 smaller solar panels into 2 charge controllers, one for each battery....Then it'd be practically maintenance-free with no requirement for 110v... But, that's just mission ready stuff, not bringing back dead/depleted batteries... Plus, you'd be able to tap off of one of the batteries with small loads without having to worry about an imbalance..

But a battery equalizer is another way to do it, for sure.
Click to expand...
I actually have that setup on my M1082 trailer. I have an interior flood and one set up outside, flag pole lights, rock lights under the bed, and my crane winch is 12v. I run two 12v deep cycles in paradelle. It has a little charger I can run to 120v and it's complemented by a solar panel. It was sort of my first dip into solar on a small scale (I've not install my PulseTech on the truck yet since I discovered the battery cutoff resolved my 12v vampiric drain).)

The little solar charger works as long as I don't pull the batteries down too far. I paid about $50 for the little kit /controller from Amazon last year.

amazon.com/gp/product/B07WYP4H6W/

20210211_102415.jpg
 
Last edited:
Third From Texas

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
Ronmar said:
No it has a low volt cutoff..., but it would be used in conjunction with a charger/maintainer, so I doubt it would ever trip unless one battery gets so bad that it absorbs all the power provided by the charger/within the limits of the equalizer... Now if you are so inattentive as to not catch it before it gets to that stage, perhaps you shouldn’t own things with power systems in them:)
Click to expand...
Yep, the low voltage cutoff is why my little solar rig on the trailer will typically shut the works down if I run my lights for about 18hrs. It reaches the point where it just goes "nope, plug the real charger in".

LOL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
110,879members
165,311threads
2,326,199posts
2,037online users
Top