jmgarage wrote:
Some of my cars have solar powered trickle chargers, some of them I have Carcoon battery conditioners connected.
The solar ones I have connected via the cigarette lighter, which we modify on cars without permanent live to it, only ignition live.
The mod is really simple, a good trickle charger or battery conditioner will be supplying less than one amp, so we splice in an extra wire behind the facias with a 5 amp fuse in it with the other end connected to a permanent live in the fuse box, the idea is that with the ignition on it will have a 30 amp fused supply, and with the ignition off it will have a 5amp fused supply.
The good thing about this, it means if the charger becomes a closed circuit due to a wire trapped or damaged, it will blow the 5 amp fuse and iscolate the battery from the charger, (with the chargers own fuse protecting it the other way), but with the ignition on, you can still use the cigar lighter or a phone charger. In an ideal world, your average satnav and car charger for a phone will not draw more than 5amps either, so if you forget to disconnect these before you switch off the ignition, you will still not blow the 5 amp fuse.
Seems to work well and protects everything.
The solar chargers do not push out many amps though, probably about .2 of an amp, I tend to use two of them, as it is not exactly sunshine city over here.. But on the average car, it should be drawing less than .2 of an amp anyway, especially once alarms have gone to sleep.
The Carcoon is amazing, I think they are the best conditioner out there, the thing I like is they periodically discharge the battery slightly and then recharge it to remove the surface charge which can fool some chargers into thinking the battery is fully charged. They also constantly monitor the battery. I have also known them to rejuvinate a bad battery that will not take a charge even from the workshop super massive battery charger on wheels.. Something to do with it de-sulphating the battery.. I only know it seems to do a good job.... They are also sold as the Dataman or something like that for motorcycles, same unit, different sticker.
I am really not sure about the use of solar charger.. It only work on sunny days so should I get additional battery? Can you tell about the effective charging system? Waiting for reply thanks in advance:)
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