12vdc car battery charger

Well, my 2005 car has the clock in the car radio, the fob receiver, there must be some voltage applied to the engine computer since they say it forgets what it learned if you take the battery out, but despite that, I think the current used has to be very small, and what amounts to a burglar alarm sentry, that monitors the doors if they are opened by reaching in and unlatching one of them, without using the key or the fob.

Do new cars have more electronics that run when the car is off?

When I used a solar charger, I had numbers 1 and 3, plus I'd put in my own 4, but no fob. IIRC I also had a crummy battery but it was fine in the summer, so I used the charger, about 12" by 8" including a 3/4" frame, during the winter, and it got me through 2 winters in good shape. Bought it at a hamfest.

What would those be? Very little needs to be powered up when the car is just sitting. Alarm, entry system. The BMW X5 here is supposed to pull 45ma when sitting, it actually pulls about 70ma, IDK if that is due to design or some small fault somewhere. That's an order of magnitude less than Fretwell's solar charger puts out.

That panel keeps the battery up in my wife's Lincoln. I do know some Cadillacs a few years ago had a software problem that would kill a battery in a few days tho. The answer they had was they would give you a trickle charger. That is not much help if your car was parked at the airport tho. My FIL had the Cadillac dealer buying him a new battery every 6 months or so. Finally they made him a deal he couldn't refuse on a new one that did not have the problem. I am sure they sold the other one to some poor sucker a couple states away.

IMHO it is implied that pulse chargers are more effective than they actually are. Patents tend to claim that their pulse process is better than all the other processes. Hype - they can't all be better.

I suggest a 3-stage charger

I have a couple of them Schummacher SSC-1000A Schummacher SC-1200A The second one was too cheap at a garage sale to not buy. They are switch-mode powered and don't have a heavy power transformer (cf BobF post). The seller likely didn't know how good the charger was. If the battery is AGM or gel-cell a 3-stage charger should have a setting for it - the voltage/current transition points are different. One of my cars is AGM or gel-cell. The car manufacturer also wants that charge rate somewhere under 5A.

I said earlier, according to the solar folks here, you count on your collectors getting about 5 hours a day at the rating in full sun. That is how they are rated anyway. If it is a 12v collector, rated at putting out 0.625a that is 5 x

Unless you put the collector outside. I have one on the roof of my shed for the mower.

Like I said - SIGNIFICANT improvement

Actually a LOT LESS current draw than in 1990. The computer memory draws virtually no current - it just requires a minimum voltage. The clock would run all year on a cr1220 cell. Radio memory again is not a current hog. The reciever for the key fob is such a low power unit it only draws about 12 ua - that's 12 MICRO Amps - 1r 12 MILLIONTHS of an amp. Moisture on the top of a clean battery likely leaks more than that. To consume 1 amp hour of power from your nominally 50 Ah battery would take a long time . 1/1000000 of a year is 13 seconds, more or less. You don't even need to do any calcs to know that 12 microamps is not going to kill your battery in 6 months.

Dunno but it seems to be plenty here. Maybe not so much in the Pac NW.

Funny, I thought you libs were all excited about the enormous capability of solar energy. Here we have a good application, using a small solar charger to keep a starting battery fully charged when the vehicle isn't in use, and all you do is complain. Fretwell should replace them all with an AC plug-in battery tender to make you happy.

My normal parking place is facing almost east, and even pointed up hill a tiny bit, and the solar panel, about 12"x7" with a 3/4" non-solar frame around the whole thing, and the car started all winter at 7:30AM when it's still cold, 2, maybe even 3 winters.

Because the windshield tilts back the sunlight hits the panel evven at noon, but soon after that the roof starts to get in the way.

Of course the sun is lower in the sky in the winter, to I guess it shone on the solar panel from the side, (but I don't think any got to it from the side window).

And IIUC Baltimore doesn't get sun as directly as Florida does.

And before I used it, several times it was too dead to start. I'd have to go get the 10-amp charger and charge for a little while.

(I may have mistakenly been powering two separate car burglar alarms then, and draining my old weak batter even faster.)

Both my vehicles sit facing south in front of the garage here in Ontario and sometimes sit 2 weeks without starting with NO charger and they always start unless my wife leaves the lights on. Still the original battery in the 2014 Kia and the battery in the '96 Ranger is

On Wed, 27 Jan 2021 22:55:19 -0500, Clare Snyder posted for all of us to digest...

I didn't know what cable size was used. Just trying to be funny..

On Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:51:01 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

It is depressing when you reduce the fleet. REALLY depressing when they yank the keys...

On Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:47:30 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

Clare can correct me but I think the baseline for parasitic draw is 50ma.

On Fri, 29 Jan 2021 21:18:06 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

You mean you didn't use a dryer plug? Shame...

I have power down there but I shut it off from the house to make my boat a little harder to steal. There is still light from the screen cage mounted floods but nothing you can plug the lift into.