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Trickle charger / maintainer
- Thread starter viper476
- Start date
Some are 12v and some are 24v
You either need three 12v ones or 1 24v and 1 12v
The military used these on m939 trucks
You either need three 12v ones or 1 24v and 1 12v
The military used these on m939 trucks
24V Solar Battery Maintainer
ALL-5225 24V Solar Battery Maintainer for all military trucks that fit 24V Battery
www.easternsurplus.net
Any guidance on hookup diagrams?
I understand connecting a 12 volt charger to the batteries in parallel. It how does that react if I put a 24v charger to the batteries in series? There all connected , so I’m confused on how to hook them up.
The 12v ones you will hook the positive to a positive post in the middle group of posts if you have 4 batteries. The middle is the 12v side do not hook it to a negative post in that series it can cause a bad sell. Use a positive post in the middle
The 24v units you will hook to the frame rail side post at the front of the battery box. Frame rail side is the 24v side.
All negatives can go to the negative posts on the furthest set to the outside of the box.
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Why 3? I use 2, one on the back 2 batteries and one on the front two. Using 12 volt maintainers. Has been working great for 5 years now. The 24 volt maintainers are more expensive than 2ea 12 volt ones.
Ronmar
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Yea simp, I don’t understand... NDT is on track... The pair of batteries farthest from the frame are the 0-12V set. The pair closest to the frame are the 12-24 set. think of a charger/maintainer like another battery. you connect a 12v maintainer -to- and +to+ on an outer battery. You connect the second 12v maintainer the same way to an inner battery. The one caution to this is the maintainers must not have a ground reference(no ground prong on their power plug or a metal case) that can find it’s way back to the truck chassis. When you connect to the inner batteries, the negative connection is actually 12V above the chassis ground. On metal cased power supplies or ones with that ground plug, - is often tied to ground and the case in the supply and if that type case comes into contact with the chassis it will pass all that battery current to ground and let the magic smoke out of your charger box and cables...
I don’t recommend 24 as there is a small 12v vampire load on the batts and only hitting the bank with 24 will still allow the batts to drift out of balance.
There is another way to do this, using an inexpensive battery balancer(search amazon) which is a little black box with 3 wires and 2 led’s. You use this with a single 12v maintainer. The 3 wires of the equalizer hook where the 24, 12 and gnd cables attach to the batteries. It senses imbalance between the 0-12 and 12-24 batteries and transfers energy (up to a maximum of 5Amps) from the batteries with higher voltage to the ones with lower voltage. It holds the 0-12v and 12-24v batts within 0.2v of each other. You can then connect the maintainer to either the 0-12 or 12-24 and the equalizer will distribute power to the other batt to try and maintain the balance between the two to within 0.2v. If I was going to use a 24v maintainer, I would also use one of these to keep things in balance.
I have been running one of these for a few months, combined with a 15W solar panel and an inexpensive buck converter(dc-dc power supply) to regulate the solar panel voltage to a 13.2v float voltage when it has sun on the panel. I connect this to the 0-12 v batt which is the one with the vampire load on it and the equalizer/balancer has kept the 12-24v batt floated to within 0.2v. Seems to be working well so far...
I don’t recommend 24 as there is a small 12v vampire load on the batts and only hitting the bank with 24 will still allow the batts to drift out of balance.
There is another way to do this, using an inexpensive battery balancer(search amazon) which is a little black box with 3 wires and 2 led’s. You use this with a single 12v maintainer. The 3 wires of the equalizer hook where the 24, 12 and gnd cables attach to the batteries. It senses imbalance between the 0-12 and 12-24 batteries and transfers energy (up to a maximum of 5Amps) from the batteries with higher voltage to the ones with lower voltage. It holds the 0-12v and 12-24v batts within 0.2v of each other. You can then connect the maintainer to either the 0-12 or 12-24 and the equalizer will distribute power to the other batt to try and maintain the balance between the two to within 0.2v. If I was going to use a 24v maintainer, I would also use one of these to keep things in balance.
I have been running one of these for a few months, combined with a 15W solar panel and an inexpensive buck converter(dc-dc power supply) to regulate the solar panel voltage to a 13.2v float voltage when it has sun on the panel. I connect this to the 0-12 v batt which is the one with the vampire load on it and the equalizer/balancer has kept the 12-24v batt floated to within 0.2v. Seems to be working well so far...
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I use the Noco Gen4, which charges and maintains each of the 4 batteries independently.
Ronmar
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Yea, I forgot about those. That is a great way also, but they are kinda spendy aren’t they?
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I am getting a 24 volt charger off of ebay like 30 bucks formy 1078
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Please explain how, unless you disconnect all the batteries, that a maintainer can independently charge batteries that are connected in parallel??
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Spendy for a battery charger, yes. Spendy in terms of pretty much anything else in the military-vehicle hobby, no. They're a couple hundred bucks, and seem to really do a good job prolonging the life of the batteries (e.g. different charging cycles for desulfating, different modes for flooded vs. AGM batteries, etc.), so that probably pays for itself.
It has four wires, that connect to the four batteries independently. Each charging circuit is isolated internally. So just you like can measure one battery's voltage while it's connected to others, you can charge just one battery while it's connected to others.
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Uh, no sir that is not correct.
Ronmar
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It may be isolated internally, but with the batteries tied together externally, and with good connections, a 4 channel noco basically becomes a 2 channel noco, as the two channels attached to parallel batteries are basically working in parallel. Yes, there are some slight differences in voltages across the interconnect wiring, but for battery charging those differences are are basically insignificant. Where it might have an advantage is IF you have a failing/bad connection between the parallel batts. But that is going to cause you issues when running anyway and is not an issue/fixed with reasonable PMS and attention to detail...
there are multiple ways to prepare this fish, and not all of them have to be expensive...
there are multiple ways to prepare this fish, and not all of them have to be expensive...
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Care to explain then? Not sure why you have to be such a jerk about it.
If there was only one charger, hooked to one battery, it could charge one battery only. If you had 4 chargers, each one hooked to one battery, and plugged in any one of them, it could charge one battery. Put all 4 of those chargers in one box, and it's still the same thing.
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Wasn't trying to be a jerk. Ronmar explained it perfectly above.
This might not be correct but it works for me so far ????? My solar panels on the roof of the the camper box feed the 8d agm house batteries which feed the 4 truck batteries on the 12 volt side but it keep the 24 v batteries topped off hot all the time so i would think put the trickle charger on 1 of the 12 volt batteries and see if over a few days that winds up chargeing all 4 batteries on yours it does on mine!
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But he didn't. Some of that might be true when it's charging more than one battery at once, which it does at first, but then it starts charging them round robin, and just maintaining them. I just went and double checked, and mine is currently charging only battery #4, which reads 14V, and the others all read 12V.
(Sometimes it's doing other stuff, like charging with a square wave to desulfate the battery, and then you can't really get a good reading.)
noco makes a charger that has 12 or 24 i bought one new for 90 something bucks on amazon and hooked it to the 12 volt battery (right front) and it kept everyhing charged up. Before i put on the solar panels on the truck if you needed to get started quicker you turn on the 24 volt agm setting and hook it on the back batteries to charge the 24 side faster but if you have time just trickle charge the 12 v side and over a few days it should have you fixed up! If you still have the 6tl agm batteries in your truck you could seperate one battery at a time and charge or load test each battery to make sure you dont have a bad one the beauty of the 12/24 noco charger it will charge a agm battery without a agm charger you have to hook a regular 12 charger to a seperate 12v battery then from that battery to the agm battery in other words you have to trick the agm into takeing a charge from seperate battery ! It sounds confusing but you can look up how to revive a dead agm or charge a agm battery on youtube
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The front two batteries are connected in parallel with heavy cables and the back two batteries are connected in parallel as well. If you apply 1000 volts to one of the two batteries connected in parallel, the other connected in parallel will see that too. So whatever the NOCO is doing to one battery, it is doing to it's parallel connected battery buddy as well.
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That does make sense, so now the question is "Why wasn't I getting 14V across that one, when I checked just now?". I'll have to go check my cables.