Charging Battery during Lockdown

[Pedronicus]

Hi folks,  owning to the current virus situation we are only using the van to walk the dogs and exercise so the Multispace XTR has been semi-mothballed for the time being.  I had a look in the handbook which states that the battery must be disconnected during charging.  I also found an old thread in which people said they didn't bother disconnecting the battery for trickle charging here.

I have a Tronic H-3056 plug-in charger for "gentle continuous & maintenance charging" which dishes out a maximum of 600 ma and a Saito Pro charger for the same use dishing out 1000 ma both of which were used during my motorcycling days for over winter topping up.

Before I go blowing up the wiring and leccy gizmos on the XTR I thought it might be a good idea to ask the thoughts and advice of the more knowledgeable members here.

Over to you, guys!  TIA

[Sol]

The problem with most conventional car battery chargers, is they don't produce actual smooth DC but a rippled DC at 100 hz, from the use of a bridge rectifier to put both cycles of the 50 hz mains waveform onto the same polarity or phase, then capacitors smooth the humps into an almost flat DC but the more current drawn from that type of circuit, the worse the "ripple" gets and that can cause issues with some kinds of electronics. Lead acid batteries don't care so much about ripple, but the electronics can. (capacitors of a certain value on the circuit boards of various items, can actually present a short circuit to 100 hz ripple and that is what can damage them - called capacitive reactance or Xc - you can google that.)

The capacitance value would have to be fairly high to be bothered by 100 hz, as capacitive reactance (or resistance) is inversely proportional to frequency, what it basically means is large value caps are most troubled by low frequency AC current. This is really why it is not officially recommended in most car manuals to leave the car connected to the battery during charging as it could potentially cause an issue with the older non regulated chargers.

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/fil...ter_1.html

An electronically controlled modern charger of low output amps should be fine to leave the battery connected IMHO.

(sorry for the long winded explanation!)

[Pedronicus]

(sorry for the long winded explanation!)

No need to apologise for such a comprehensive reply, dear chap.  Just want to make sure I don't fry any of the electrics with the wrong kit/procedure.

[dadstaxi]

Hi folks,  owning to the current virus situation we are only using the van to walk the dogs and exercise so the Multispace XTR has been semi-mothballed for the time being.  I had a look in the handbook which states that the battery must be disconnected during charging.  I also found an old thread in which people said they didn't bother disconnecting the battery for trickle charging here.

I have a Tronic H-3056 plug-in charger for "gentle continuous & maintenance charging" which dishes out a maximum of 600 ma and a Saito Pro charger for the same use dishing out 1000 ma both of which were used during my motorcycling days for over winter topping up.

Before I go blowing up the wiring and leccy gizmos on the XTR I thought it might be a good idea to ask the thoughts and advice of the more knowledgeable members here.

Over to you, guys!  TIA

hi guys,have the same problem with berli and a motor home I owned , found solution by using solar panel sitting on dash, and clipped directly to battery  not via cig plug as its not connected without ignition in acc position and it give free power ,just make sure it has a 'blocking diode' in lead or it will discharge battery when sun goes down  hope this helps 
and thanks to all for forum had a good browse and gleaned some good info 
2010 berli multispace