I asked the question a little while ago about putting my TM battery in place of my vehicles battery in order to charge it. I was told this would not work because a TM battery needs a trickle charge.

So what if ... I were to hook some large alligator clips to the Battery and wire up a male Cigarrete lighter recepticle and charge the battery that way,If im tginking correctly,that would give the battery12 Volts, am I correct,or would this be a bad idea as well?

Im thinking of a way to charge the battery while Im driving home from the lake.

I do have a Charger at home,but what about those times when Im camping,I cant always bring my Charger with me.

Bass Pro Shop XPS Phase Charger # 21-533-810-00 Pg. 495 Master Book this is wired off of your tow vehicle don't know any one who has one so don't know how well it works . If you try it please post results.

Charging the batt from the cigarette lighter should work, but the engine must be running to to charge the battery. Most lighter sockets are fused at about 20 amps so at that  rate of charge you would have to run the engine for 4-5 hours to get a nearly full charge. You will want to carry extra fuses along as you have no way to limit the charge rate and it can easily exceed 20 amps if the battery is completely discharged as your alternator can put out 60 amps or more. I am not aware of anyone that makes a current limiter for an application like this but a reasonably capable electronics guy could make one for you.

I don't get into a lot of these battery discussions because of the crap that gets started by those that "THINK" they know, but I do wish all these people saying TM batteries need to be at a 2 amp/slow, trickle charge rate would get themselves educated on batteries. Charging a flooded cell, lead acid battery at that low of a rate is actually harmfull to the battery and you will never get it fully charged.

By industry standards, 10 amps is considered a slow rate, 2 amps or slower is considered a trickle charge. I know of no deep cycle trolling motor battery made that would need to be charged at less than eight amps. 8, 10, and 12 amps are your most common amp requirements for Deep cycle TM batteries (10% of the batteries rated amphour capacity is the recommended charge rate).

Also, this stuff about running a battery all the way down and then slow charging back at 2 amps is total hog wash. This is absolutly doing about as much harm to your battery as you can do. The only other two things that can damage it any worse is to run it out of water and over charge it to where it gets hot.

As for charging off your vehicle, First off, you can charge your deep cycle TM battery at 35 - 40 amps to 80% charge, (as long as it does not generate too much heat in the battery) then the amps need to be droped to a much lower rate to finish it off. I've never measured how many amps a vehicle will dump into a battery (might try to do that this weekend) but if you only ran it off a #10 or #12 wire, I doubt it will be too great. You have to remember, it will be connected in parallel to your vehicle battery so the altinator is only going to see a partial disharge load from you TM battery and is not going to be trying to crank max amps into it. Then as it gets closer to full charge, that amp load is going to drop way off.

The more I think about it, if I get a chance this weekend I'm going to measure what kind of charge rates you get and will post it. I have the equipment to easily do this, just a matter of getting the time.

Thanks Way2, right on, saved me all that typing.  

The RV industry has kits for tow vehicles to charge travel trailer batteries.  These have the appropriate hardware, controls and current limit protection.

Pay heed to Way2slow and Ann Marie. Their posts are not what my second cousin's older brother's neighbor heard at the dock.