bush battery charging Q?

how do most of you recharge your battery each day when out in the back of beyond. portable generators or do most use the car charger does that comes with the minelabs. If so does it take long to charge and does it have a massive drain on the car battery.

hi
 in the cruiser i have a duel battery setup so i dont have to worry to much about a flat battery.
 if you are talking about recharging a gpx battery they recharge really quick , a few hours, but if you are charging the old dome type battery they take all night to charge.
 the cruiser has big batteries in it and go ok. i don`t know what effect recharging would have on a little car battery.
 

Gday


The minelab chargers work really well from the car and will charge a gpx battery within hours but as daywun said the older gel cell batteries will usually take all night, if you are wanting to charge up multiple batteries the you would have to think about having some sort of dual battery system or a slave battery that you charge and take along just to charge the detector batteries.

By slave battery I mean a 12v car battery that you can charge up before you leave home, and that you can either top up by a generator or solar panel, this is a cheap option for short trips, I used to use this type of set up and could charge a couple of batteries at once, or cycle the batteries over so that I had charged batteries available all the time, and have a 30 watt solar panel that would keep it topped up, you just have to make up some basic wiring with lighter socket plugs for the charger to go into.

If you want to charge your batteries using the minelab charger through say a lighter socket while driving about you have to remember to switch the charger off before switching off the ignition or otherwise you can have problems with it, the other way to do it is to run some wires direct from the battery to a convient place inside the vehicle where you can put a lighter socket and then plug in the charger and it will charge direct from the battery and will not be effected by the accessory plug being switched on and off, but you do have to consider if you are going to use it overnight you may want to run the engine for a short while before going to bed to top up the battery, I have never had a battery go flat from charging detector batteries overnight, even the older gel cell types, but I have always used high capacity or deep cycle batteries in my vehicles, and always ran the engine to keep them topped up if staying in one place.

For extended trips you really should consider a dual battery system for your vehicle, not only for charging batteries etc, but for other things like fridges and also you can set them up so that you can jump start your vehicle from it as well if your main battery goes flat, if you are going to spend a fair bit of time out then this is the best option.

Another thing I have seen used is one of those jump starter units that you get from super cheap autos or similar, you can get them cheap and they will charge detector batteries no worries, and they come with a car socket charger so you can in turn charge it from your vehicle battery or when driving about the place or from a solar panel etc., just remember not to use the one that you carry for emergency starting your car or it may be no good to you if you need it, this would only really be an option for a short weekend trip or something.

cheers


stayyerAU

Thanks to both repliers for that great information .... you people really are a mine of info

I bought a 800 watt geni for a $150 almost 2 years ago and its still going, at night time camped i run a massive extention lead out, ill have a lamp, charging the detector and watching a movie on the laptop how things have changed from, i think 4 litres last me 6 hours which is more than enough to charge the battery, best investment i ever bought, i would have been happy if it just worked a few times.

I have an offroad Van that has 520 watts of panels on it, and if its cloudy for days, weeks, I have a Honda EU20i that runs a 50amp smart charger to top up the battery bank.

But

I went into Super Cheap a while back and they had these little solar power stations on sale.... its a white box, with a 17ah battery built into it with a whole bunch of cig lighter plugs plus others. It also has a fold up solar panel that slides out and unfolds so you can charge the thing, and even comes with 2x led work lights, and a selection of leads and phone charging plugs !!
Got the whole thing for $100....... brought a couple of them. I believe they still sell them.
I just plug anything I need to charge into the cig sockets..........works a treat, not enough power to run an inverter for long though, but for straight 12v stuff its great.

Gday


Yesterday I saw that K mart still have the fold out solar panels,in the camping section, had a look at the box but could not find what the output was but looking at the size of the panel I would be guessing that they are in the 15 watt range, about $120 or thereabouts.

Big enough to top up a 12v charging station anyway, that charging station that you have Harb sounds like the go too, I think I saw them once too but wondered at the time whether they would be big enough to do the job, but by your report it sounds as though it would be an ideal and economical way to do detector batteries in the field, if you had a couple of them you could always have one charging up while you were using the other.


cheers

stayyerAU

Hi all, have a fairly new li-ion battery which takes around several hours to charge after average days outing.Have 07 model 4x4 with alternator capacity of 120watts. Hoping the technical gurus could estimate roughly how long i would have to run the engine to top up car battery after charging detector battery. Also, would idle speed be ok or should revs be increased? Thanks johnf

Off the top of my head:

8.4volt x 12Amp hour = 100.8 watts add 20% for ineffeciencies equals 120 watts

artrix wrote:how do most of you recharge your battery each day when out in the back of beyond. portable generators or do most use the car charger does that comes with the minelabs. If so does it take long to charge and does it have a massive drain on the car battery.

i tend to recharge my gpx 4000 lithium battery off the cig-lighter when driving to and from my base camp each day and ive never had it go flat on me out in the bush i find if you push the battery you can get two days detecting from one full charge so topping it up each time you go out it never gets flat

Hi Artrix.

Here's something to make your life a little easier.Get yourself a Car Jump Starter.They come with 12volt power sockets.They can recharge all SD,GP,GPX,Batteris {via their appropriate battery car chargers},including kick start your car if your battery happens to go flat for some reason or another.The portable car charger itself,can be kept fully charged through your car cigarette lighter[comes with its own 12volt cigarette charger].One's going on ebay Australia at the moment,or you can get one,that best suits your needs from Kmart,Rays Outdoors,Bunnings or any Car accessory outlet.


Cheers kon61

good stuff cheers