Battery Basics Charging and Maintaining a Car Truck Battery

Dead battery? You know what? Let's talk about how to avoid this situation. Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today we want to go over a subject called battery maintenance, there's going to be several things that we're going to cover in it. So make sure you stay tuned. As always, if you like this video, make sure that you like the video right down here, you comment and you subscribe. While you're at it, go ahead and ring the bell. That way you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

Now, when it comes to battery maintenance, there's going to be a lot of different types of things you can use. If you look down here, you're gonna see that there's a whole range of miscellaneous things that you can have. And that's just the things that we offer here. Of course, this can look overwhelming to you, and maybe it is, so what we're going to do is we're going to try to break it down a little bit easier. Let's divvy this up into some smaller sections that way that we can get a clearer picture of what's going on.

So we split these up into three categories. You have the maintainers over here, these are generally speaking just for super low current. Over here, we're gonna have maintainers and chargers, okay? So this you can pick between maintaining and/or giving a little extra boost with a charge. And then, of course, you have something that's a little bit more bulky, this is actually going to do charging, maintaining, and if you needed to jumpstart your vehicle because maybe you didn't maintain it the way that you should have, this will handle that as well. Of course, they all have their specific applications but if you go ahead and you just use the maintainer to keep up with your battery, more than likely, you're not necessarily going to need any of this.

The first thing we're going to talk about is the maintainers. And for me personally, this is the base step. I like this one right here because it's solar-powered, you can have it pretty much anywhere, and you don't necessarily need to plug it into a wall. So you're not going to, of course, use your household electricity, and you can actually harness the power of the sun which is out almost every day, and it's going to keep that battery maintained. Of course, if you wanted to you can go with something like this, which is much smaller. It's got the connectors that go right onto the battery. And then, of course, it would plug right into your wall outlet at 110 volts. What this will do, is it's going to keep track of the voltage in your battery. And it's going to know when it's time to turn on and when it's time to turn off. That's one of the important things about when you're shopping for a maintainer, you want to make sure that it has the microchip processors in it, that know when it's time to turn on and when it's time to turn off, they're going to monitor the health of that battery, and keep track of it for you.

Now, when we're talking about maintainers, a lot of times people will get confused, and they'll say, "Well, it's the same thing as a trickle charger." It's kind of the same thing only because they have a very low amount of current. But the difference would be, and it's a very big difference, would be that the trickle charger is actually just going to keep on trickling that juice to your battery, just keep it coming, where this is actually going to know to turn on and off. So if you think about it, let's say that you've got a bathtub, right? And you just leave the faucet on and you're letting it drip. At first, it's really not that big of a deal, but over time, it's going to fill up that tub till it's full. And then of course, if you're using that trickle charger, it's going to keep on going and it's going to come over the sides. If you use a charger like this, it's going to know where the battery is going to be for ultimate charge.

So now let's move around to one of these maintainer/chargers, you're going to notice overall, they're going to have larger wires, all right? And that's because the current that's going to need to go through them if you, of course, you were charging is going to need to be greater than the current of just a small trickle charge or maintainer charge. You're also going to notice that it's going to plug into the wall more than likely, and of course, use your wall power. So you need to have an outlet that's outside or an extension cord that runs from inside to out.

Slide that aside. Now, we're going to move on to talking about the chargers, right? You're going to notice, of course, these cables are much thicker, that's because this one right here that we offer can not only maintain, it can not only charge, but it can also do a jumpstart function. It's also going to have some functions in here that are going to be much different than the basic maintainers or even one of the basic maintainer/chargers. With this particular one, it's not going to do anything until you have it actually connected to a battery. It needs to know that it's making a complete circuit before it's gonna want to do anything. So it's not gonna... You could touch these two together, and you're not gonna have any sparks, you don't have to necessarily worry about getting hurt. So that's a very important feature to this.

Now, when we're talking about chargers, it's important to remember that there are different types, some of them are smart chargers, and they know when the battery is connected, and when it isn't. They also know the charge of the battery and where it's at so they know just how much amperage to put to it. Other chargers which would probably be the older versions of chargers, you pretty much just hook these up, you plug it into the wall, turn a little dial that just says on, and then it starts charging that battery, that's great, but it doesn't stop charging the battery until you go ahead and you turn that switch off and of course, unplug it. So if you were to turn it on, walk away and then come back out, maybe you come out and you smell this weird smell, funny smell in the air. Maybe you walk up to your vehicle, smell's getting stronger, and you can kind of see this little smoke coming up, so you go ahead and you lift up the hood a little bit higher. Now you really get a smell and you get more smoke, and that's worrisome. At this point, you need to be very worried. You need to run over, you need to turn off your charger, unplug it, and then get your vehicle into a well-ventilated area. If you're dealing with an area that you're inside, like a garage of some sort, open up that door as far as possible, get as much air in there as possible, because you're overheating your battery, and it's starting to boil inside. Once that happens, you've caused detrimental damage to your battery.

Now, we're going to talk about the difference between chargers and trickle chargers. Like I said, the trickle charger, generally speaking, once you turn it on, it's going to keep on feeding that little bit of current feeding into the battery and try to keep the maintenance up to where it's supposed to be. And of course, over time, if you leave it on for too long, it's going to probably go a little bit above and potentially cause issues. If you happen to use one of those old-time chargers, it's going to do about the same thing, it's going to keep on running until it overflows that battery, right? The only difference would be here's what a trickle charger wire looks like, as you can tell it's very small. So you're not going to get very much current through that, right? They're not intending for you to get very much current. If you had an older charger, you might have wires that look a little bit more like this, which in comparison, I don't know, I could probably 15 of these small trickle charger wires inside just one end, or one wire of the charger wires. So of course, you're gonna have more current coming out of the regular charger, which means you're going to have less time to react to the issue at hand.

So like I was saying, with the charger/maintainers, generally speaking, especially the new ones are going to have a processor inside and they're going to know what's going on. If you happen to put these on to the battery, and you have them in the wrong direction, it's going to let you know what's going on. Now, assuming you do put them on in the right direction, you're gonna, of course, put the red on the positive, the black on the negative, which of course will be the ground as well. And then you come over and you can clearly see that it's not going to say that your clamps are reversed. Next, what you would do is you would just go ahead and press start. Then it's going to tell you that it's charging. And this one does say it's a charger/maintainer, well, what it's actually going to do, is it's going to charge it up till it gets to the peak voltage. And then once it's there, it's going to make sure that it stays there, it's going to turn off and on as needed until it's of course time to take it back off, and then you're ready to go down the road.

So we've got our maintainers here, we have the simple one and then, of course, we have this one. This one is the charger/maintainer that says that it's pushing 10 amps, right? And then of course, if you just had a maintainer, this one's going to be pushing 1,000 milliamps, which is about one amp really. So if you had a battery that was kind of on its last leg, and it seemed like it was having troubles, of course, you would want to go with something like this to try to help get it back up to where it's supposed to be. If you know your battery's good, and you just kind of want to keep up with the maintenance, you can go with something as simple as this. This is just gonna have a light current. Now, something like this is great if you know you have a great battery and you just want to keep it maintained because this is only going to push one amp. The way I'm going to do that, I'm gonna go ahead and connect that positive. Get the negative on here. Have those hanging out. I ran an extension cord across the front of the vehicle up through the hood area, right like that. Now, we can see it's going, right? At this point, I'm just gonna rest it right up in here, like that. And then, of course, I can safely close my hood, and then at this point, I can leave my car for days, weeks, and months, if needed.

So we get the battery charger hooked up to the wall, and of course, to the battery. If you have a smart charger, it's going to tell you what the percentage of the battery is at, you could click a button, it'll tell you the voltage, you can click it again, it's going to tell you how many amps. Obviously there's nothing going through it right now, we're just kind of sitting still. That looks great. And of course, there are other functions where you could give it a boost, if you were to move over. You want to try to find a battery charger that lists options for having a glass mat or just a standard battery or lead-acid battery, it's going to make a big difference. If it doesn't have the auto function you need to make sure you choose it because if you choose wrong, it could make all the difference in the ability to charge a battery and the life of the battery.

So now let's try out this super sweet solar-powered one. There's multiple uses for this one, you can either do it outside of your vehicle like this, or you can do it inside the vehicle. So when you put these on, make sure you have them laying down flat. Now, we're going to close down the hood here. And then, of course, we can take this, you can set it right out in the sun. And this is gonna maintain your battery. Something like this is great, especially if you have your own house and you have plenty of land. And you don't necessarily have to worry about having people that don't necessarily know you around it. Obviously, if I was to go someplace, I wouldn't necessarily leave this outside of my vehicle. It's going to cost a couple bucks, and I really don't want to lose it and buy another one. So, I'll show you the next step.

So now let's say that you live in an area that maybe you don't want to leave this outside, right? Well, we offer a little connector that you can go ahead and connect to the wire. It's very simple, [inaudible 00:09:54] like this and you can plug it right into your auxiliary power port and you can go ahead and grab that panel. And you know how much sun your dash gets, I'm sure you've gotten in your vehicle in the summertime.

Now, when it comes time to using your auxiliary power port, it's important to remember two things. Generally speaking, it's either going to be constant power, or it's going to be key power. And that's going to make all the difference on whether or not your charger is going to work. And what I mean by that is constant power is going to have constant power. And key power will have power when the key is in the on position or run. A simple way you can tell is with a digital multimeter or of course, if you have a cell phone charger, or something like that, that happens to light up, if it lights up and the key is not in the on position, or even in the vehicle, you know, you've got constant power. If you plug this in, and it doesn't light up at all, until you have your key in the on position, that means that you have key power.

So knowing that we have constant power to the vehicle, you can go ahead and use your solar charger. The reason why I say you want to make sure that you have constant power is because if you don't and you plug this in, it's not going to do any charging to that battery until you actually have the key in the on position which why would you want to the key in the on position, if that's the case?

Now, it's important when you place it up on the dash, or wherever you put it, it's in the direct sun. If it's not, it's not going to get full charging capability. Something that's also important to remember, if you have multiple power outlets, and you know that you have constant power, you definitely don't want to go ahead and leave this plugged in, and then leave it for days because obviously, that light is pulling a draw on the battery. So let's say you leave this out back in the sun, you go ahead and you close your tailgate, but your glass is of course, tinted on most cases, and generally speaking, the back window's probably going to be dirty. Of course, this is going to block a whole bunch of those UV rays that you're going to need to charge up that battery.

Now, that's the way it's supposed to sound. If you liked this video, make sure you get down there like, comment and subscribe. Thanks.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com for quality auto parts shipped to your door, the place for DIY auto repair. And if you enjoyed this video, please click the subscribe button.