Battery Tender/Maintainer Failure

Last week, I went out to the garage to fire up the GSA for my 'last' ride of the year given the forecast for snow and cold weather. I unplugged my battery tender, geared up and pushed the start button to hear 'CLICK'. Imagine my surprise! I hooked the GSA up to a battery charger and it fire right up. With my 60 mile ride complete, fuel stabilizer added and a full tank of gas the GSA is all ready for that Winter slumber.

But what about that 8 year old battery tender? The lights were on when I last plugged it in and the power light was on when I unplugged it. My volt meter testing proved the battery tender to not be working. In fact, the instructions indicated that if the tender fails and the light(s) are on it will discharge the battery, which is apparently what happened to me.

I fully charged the battery and purchased another tender. I just wanted to pass this one on............

Battery tender failures

I have had 2 of the older tenders quit charging. One of the new style replacements boiled a battery dry in the 3 months it was left attached. I scrapped all of mine and bought NOCO genius replacements. One 1100 and one 3500. Extremely pleased with them in charging wet, gel, and arm batteries.

If your going through the acc. plug I think you have to cycle the key. If direct to Batt. something else.

I have never expected a $30 or $40 battery charger to perform as well as a $60, $80, or $100 charger.

No direct connection to the battery adds a level of complexity to successfully maintaining a battery.
OM

Mine is a direct battery connection. The new unit is functioning as it should.

I can't wait for Spring.......

Good to hear. At this moment I have 6 chargers running 24-7.

Update: I decided to double check my new battery tender, it's working like a champ with an output around 13.2 VDC. However, when the old one gave up the ghost, it blew an inline 10 amp mini fuse. I replaced the fuse and now I'm getting the trickle charge (400 ma) to the battery. I'm sure glad there was an inline fuse!

Nice to have the update.
I think it was Littlefuse companies slogan was “electricity’s safety valve” or something like that.
OM

Thanks OM!

I got another tip the other day on an old truck forum. The guy was tired of throwing out his old battery maintainers so he bought a lamp timer at a big box store. He's programmed it to turn on a battery charger for a half an hour each day. If this Centech maintainer is short-lived, I may give that a try....

what? is lamp timer

junkjohn said:

what? is lamp timer

Click to expand...

Generally used to turn a lamp off and on. A lamp timer(s) can have it look like your home is occupied when you are away. The generally are plugged into a wall outlet and then the lamp or other “low draw” devices are piggy-backed on to the outlet.
OM

In my earlier days of motorcycle ownership when battery chargers were dumb we had five bikes and one charger. So during the Iowa winters I had a routine. In the first of each month I would attach the charger to one bike for 24 hours: then the next bike for 24 hours, etc until I had charged each bike for that month. Repeat the first of the next month. It worked perfectly fine to charge those batteries.