Welp, mighty good questions, ya got there, youngster. The answers are, of course, "it depends." Without knowing the design of the charger, a fellow can't easily know how much current it parasites off the battery when unpowered. Now, one would think, one would /hope/ that the designer said to hisself, "self, I'd best make sure that my customers' batteries are not discharged if there is a power outage at his or her house." But one never knows, does one? Use an ammeter. A diode would take away 0.5 to 0.6V from the charge voltage, which is pretty significant when considering how much voltage a battery needs in order to be fully charged. 12.6V is full charge. 12.0V ain't. -- Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana") 74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.) Bend, OR KG6RCR
On 11/13/2009 4:35 PM Jim Felder wrote: > About a month ago, I mated a trickle charger with a cig lighter plug > so I could plug up the westy electrical socket to a power source, plug > the trickle charger in to the interior 110v socket, and plug the cig > lighter plug into the receptacle on the bulkhead under the seat. No > muss, no fuss, but not quite permanently wired in. That turned out to > be a good thing, as I noticed on a recent camping trip that even with > the charger unplugged from the interior 110 receptacle, the LED light > on the charger glowed when the setup was plugged into the cig lighter > socket. That means that the battery was feeding the charger. > > Is there any significant current loss going backward through the > charger? Is it just running the LED, or is it running down my battery? > I presume the proper diode in the proper place would stop this. Can > anyone describe what I should to do modify? > > Jim > |
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