DAZID1 Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 Having gone through two charging units in quick succession I have used a standard battery charger for the last two years. Yesterday I bought a 10 amp smart charger that has 7 stages of charging. The question is, if I cut the crocodile clips off it and wire it into the loom as per the way the original was wired, will it still work as it is supposed? Does it charge the two batteries separately ie changing from one to the other or does it charge them in parallel? Previously it didn't matter which battery was being used they both got charged, I guess it will work the same but T wasn't sure whether I would get the best from smart part of the charger unless it did one battery and then moved over to the second. DAZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sshortcircuit Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 If you only have two wires out of the charger how do you think it will know which battery it's connected to? ?? It will see both batteries as one and charge accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAZID1 Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 I don't Hence the question, I was hoping for an answer regarding how the control unit decided it charged the system and how a smart charger would cope with two linked batteries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sshortcircuit Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 " It will see both batteries as one and charge accordingly." Hopefully somebody will provide a more detailed description of smart chargers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 DAZID1 I believe your Swift Royale is 1997-vintage, so its original battery charger won’t have been particularly sophisticated and I’m guessing the “standard” charger you’ve been using for two years was similarly simple. It might be helpful if you had provided details of which charger (eg. the make and model) you’ve now bought as, on the face of it, a 10 Amp output seems on the low side to effectively charge a pair of parallel-connected leisure batteries (which I assume is what you’ll be doing) unless those batteries are relatively-small capacity. As shortcircuit advises, your new charger will treat the two batteries as one, exactly as your earlier chargers did. ‘Smart’ leisure-vehicle battery chargers are commonplace as original equipment nowadays and people don’t seem to complain about how they function with multiple-battery systems - so I don’t think that should be a concern. Whether you can optimise the charging process by treating each battery separately may depend on what features your new charger has. As there’s no way that the charger can ‘recognise' each battery individually while they are parallel-connected, you’d presumably need to introduce some sort of switching system to permit separate charging to take place. Realistically, just connect up the charger in the same way as the other chargers were connected and let the thing get on with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAZID1 Posted March 1, 2015 Author Share Posted March 1, 2015 Derek. Thanks for that. I have done just that and it does seem to be ok, just to clarify I only have one Leisure battery, the two batteries I refer to are the under bonnet and the leisure battery. The charger originally fitted was a Power Part P116 10 amp, also worked as just a power supply if need although I always had a battery on it. It always seemed to charge the leisure battery first regardless of what battery I was drawing off, and I wondered how it did this and if the smart charger would be confused, or its effectiveness reduced somehow. The charger is a PACO EBAY item no171386310024 It did carry on for 3 hours after my standard charger stopped charging topping up the last 20% presumably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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